


Of Love Barns and Flamingos

by babygrxxt



Series: The Life of Leavenworthers [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Clint Barton's Love Barn, Depression, F/M, Growing Up is Hard, Howard Stark Is a Dick, M/M, Masturbation (brief), Prequel, That Christmas (TM), The Donut Scandal, The Incident, The Playground, Unreliable Narrator, bad decisions all round, hints of self harm, small town AU, tw:mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2018-08-30 13:41:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 64,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8535349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babygrxxt/pseuds/babygrxxt
Summary: When you grow up in Leavenworth, you get many things. The biggest of these is a childhood packed with adventure, excitement and violence, usually towards friends. Another thing you receive is the season pass to Emotional Constipation and a VIP ticket to the Fall in Love With Your Best Friend show, both of which Steve is the poster boy for yet refuses to accept that he even possesses them in the first place.Before there was Afghanistan and New York and Sharon Carter, there was Clint's farm and Betty Ross and an irrational amount of jealousy towards his best friend. There was also a lot of stories to tell.What exactly was the Donut Scandal? Why does Bucky refuse to talk about that Christmas? How did Natasha fall in love with Clint? What occurred between Reed Richards and Tony Stark during the Flamingo Debacle? How did Sam, Bucky and Steve become the Prank Squad of Leavenworth High? And, perhaps most importantly:What the fuck happened in the Love Barn?





	1. Chapter 1

On the first day of sixth grade, Steve Rogers vomited on Headmaster Fury's new navy tie, and was sent to Mr. Charles Xavier.

He had expected the high school biology teacher to be scary, but in actual fact, Mr. Xavier was a man of fine breeding. Having been brought up in an environment where the worth of his future career path was decided wholly by the amount of zeroes on his monthly pay check (which rendered education, of all choices, utterly unacceptable) Mr. Xavier had developed a kind yet firm demeanour that was easily translated from high ranking military officials or banking managers to the wonderful world of pre-teens and teenagers.

He had the sort of smile that made pupils lean inwards and tell him, in the greatest of confidences, exactly where their annual beach party would be held, and he had the kind of intelligence that meant he realised how his career would benefit from divulging the information to Headmaster Fury, who indeed liked him very much, and who would, at many points during the year, tell Mr. Xavier that if he had the choice, Mr. Xavier would be his second-in command. Instead, Leavenworth High was ruled over by Fury and Vice Principal Strucker, who were both assholes, but Fury the significantly less of the two.

The distinct smell of sickness rose from where some had splashed over Steve's clothes, and his eye hurt so bad he almost did something embarrassing like ... _cry_ , or something. He paid extra special attention to the displays in the biology room instead to stop from humiliating himself further.

There was a rat in a jar on the desk. It looked like Steve felt, all bloated and floating in liquid, eyes wide open and limbs stiff as a board.

At least his nose had stopped bleeding.

"Now, Steve." Mr. Xavier leaned forward in his wheelchair, two fingers to his temple. "Why _did_ you vomit over Mr. Fury?"

It was a long story.

"Steve, you have to tell me. I know it must be hard, given what's going on at home and all..."

Don't talk about Ma.

"But I need to get some form of answer out of you, you understand that?"

When Mr. Xavier did not continue, Steve nodded his head once, so abruptly it made his brain bounce around a little. Once it settled down again, Steve realised Mr. Xavier had continued talking, and he strained to figure out what he was expecting Steve to say.

"The truth, Steve," Mr. Xavier said with a sigh. "I just need you to tell me the truth."

Rumlow knows the truth. Schmidt knows the truth. Pierce knows. Tony knows.

"No one else will give me anything, Steve. Help me out, won't you? It's only the first day of term for me too."

Yeah. Steve realised.

"I got in touch with your elementary school."

Oh dear.

"They said you, Rumlow and Schmidt have had issues before."

That was an understatement. Steve nursed his lip, which had swollen so much by that stage that his tooth was cutting into the skin.

Focus on the rat, Steve.

"Steve. I don't want to have to phone your mother, but if I can't get to the bottom of this, I might have to."

Ma worked three shifts over the weekend, and she was probably running around the hospital as they spoke. She wouldn't have time to come into school, not when the phone had been switched off, and the cable was down so Steve couldn't watch Spongebob. Besides, every time she had came into elementary school, she had sat in the corridor with this ... this _heaviness_ on her shoulders and her eyes looked so tired and she just kept repeating that she loved Steve, she loved him so much, as if she was trying to convince herself of that fact as much as him.

"No," Steve said. It came out like a whimper, his voice hoarse from disuse. "No, don't call Ma. I'll tell you."

Mr. Xavier took his fingers down from his temples and leaned back in his chair, raising an eyebrow at Steve. That was the look teachers always got when they thought they'd figured something out about you; in this case, it was Mr. Xavier realising what was, and had always been, Steve Rogers' weak-spot.

"It's a long story," Steve warned him.

"I've got all day," Mr. Xavier replied, though that was abundantly untrue. They were only able to keep pupils until five at the latest in detention. Steve read up on the legalities of that in fourth grade.

He could've given Mr. Xavier a condensed version, but then that would just mean he got home to an empty house quicker, and it really wasn't all that bad among the rats and the formaldehyde. At least there was someone else there to tell Steve he was being silly if he heard a bang outside, or to convince him it was just the cat his Ma kept feeding. Not that Mr. Xavier would ever call him silly; he wasn't that kind of educator.

So, Steve started from the beginning.

-

There was a tiny speck of shaving cream on Steve's neck that he wouldn't discover until halfway through the school day, when Rumlow would scream at the top of his lungs across the library, "Look! Steve Rogers is _shaving,"_ in that voice of his that made everybody burst into tittering laughter, no matter how unfunny the material was. It was strange that Sarah hadn't noticed that little imperfection; the morning before Steve's first day in middle school was filled with photographs and Sarah looking at her son with a tiny smile on her face which at the time, Steve found creepy but looking back, he realised was probably how he looked at her 99% of the time as well.

Sarah was already dressed in her scrubs, her blonde hair - which was thinning as they spoke, more to illness than age - scraped back into a meagre ponytail. Her hands were dry from washing them so often, and when she wiped her thumb over Steve's cheek to get some jam off, her skin felt rough and calloused, and so much like home Steve almost did something embarrassing like _hug her_ or, even worse, _cling to her and never let her go_ because goddamnit, he'd already been through five grades of torture and he wasn't even halfway to the finish line yet.

"Do you want peanut butter or coleslaw in your sandwiches?" Sarah asked from the kitchen.

Steve stared at himself this side and that in the hall mirror, trying desperately hard not to choke due to the confines of his shirt. His hair was slicked back with gel Joseph had used in the eighties. Sarah found it stuffed in the back of a wardrobe during their annual scramble for miscellaneous items to sell in the garage sale, and while it had seemed a good idea at the time, Steve had just realised that it made his hair look wet or greasy, either of which Rumlow or Pierce were sure to comment on, because if one thing remained constant from fifth to sixth grade, it was Rumlow and Pierce's affinity for making fun of everyone that was moderately different to the norm.

"Steve?"

He glanced away from his reflection to see his mother sticking her head around the kitchen door, her thin eyebrows in a rakish fashion that only served to indicate the urgency of her question. Steve, who hadn't heard it, stared dumbly at his mother. She sighed, disappeared once more into the kitchen and muttered under her breath, "Peanut butter it is."

Maybe it wasn't the shirt that was making Steve feel so claustrophobic, maybe it was the heat. It was September, admittedly, but the house seemed to have gotten warmer the more time Steve spent preparing for the day, rushing around their small home searching for his stationery and timetable and other stupid things that he'd probably never use again, and it was just - _really_ \- hot.

"Here you are," Sarah said.

She pressed a brown paper bag into Steve's hand, which had his name scrawled in Sharpie on the side. He appreciated it, but knew that the likelihood of his peanut butter sandwiches ever reaching his mouth was basically nil, considering the first day tradition that Schmidt's gang concocted in kindergarten and carried on ever since.

"Are you sure you don't want me to walk you up?"

"No, Ma," Steve said. If Sarah brought him up to the school gates, he just knew she'd do something like kiss him, and he'd be left with bright red lipstick on his collar for hours and that would just be _mortifying._ Did she want to get him _killed?_ "You'd be late for work."

Sarah's watch had been passed down through generations of the Rogers family, and when Joseph, an only child, had married, Steve's great-grandmother had decided it was imperative for the only remaining young female in the immediate family to receive it. Since then, Sarah had worn it religiously around her wrist every day, despite the fact that it ran five minutes fast and she was more stressed for the rushing. She glanced at it, seemingly forgetting the extra five minutes as she was prone to do, and let out a sigh.

"Alright," she conceded. "I just - I don't like the idea of you going alone. All the other moms must bring their kids up to school, don't they?"

Steve knew the drill. They had the same conversation every September, and yet it maintained its meaning and freshness well.

"None of the other moms come up," Steve comforted her, "and they don't give their kids amazing lunches, either."

A wide smile crossed over his mother's face, yet Steve could not find it within him to reciprocate. As Sarah busied herself putting on her coat and helping eleven year old Steve into his, Steve gave a little cough.

"Yes, dear?"

There were holes in the fingertips of his gloves, and his scarf was so scratchy it flared up his eczema (not that Sarah would ever know; it disappeared by the end of the day, and he was sure to keep the scarf hidden away in his satchel until he saw her smiling face at the gate). Steve heaved a sigh and fixed his eyes firmly on the ceiling.

"I'll be okay, won't I, Ma?" he asked. He had a couple Hershey's bars in the front pouch of his bag and peanut butter cups squashed at the bottom, just in case he had to bribe some people to be his friend. It paid to be prepared, but that wasn't to say he wasn't nervous.

Although they did this every year, Sarah still forgot her lines, and sort of made them up as she went. That year, she leaned down to Steve's level, not that there was much bending required as she was only five foot three, and took his face in her hands.

"My darling boy," she said, kissing him an embarrassing _three_ times. "It can't be worse than elementary school, can it?"

The voice of reason, though not exactly what Steve wanted to hear at that time, because in his eleven year old mind there were infinitely more things that could go wrong in middle school; for one, he had survived elementary, whereas there was no evidence that he would make it to fourteen, and for a second, he had friends in elementary. They had picked their nose and ate it, but they'd been friends, and now they were all scattered about and in different classes, apart from Jane, who was really only Steve's friend because they'd been neighbours since birth, so she didn't count.

"The bus is here now, sweetie. You better run on," Sarah said, tapping his arm. Steve took a deep breath and bulked up his shoulders, which he thought made him look rather intimidating, but really made him look like a very weak gorilla.

He made his way down the garden path, his mother slightly behind him already talking away on her phone to the other nurses, and stood in front of the bus doors, his stomach in his throat.

Steve had never taken the bus before. Indeed, for the grand majority of elementary school his mother had been able to walk him there, or if she hadn't, he had gone along with Jane and her mother Dr. Foster, who was very strict and not very nice, though she made good chocolate cake and always knew the answers to homework questions. Leavenworth High (and Middle School) was further away though - two cornfields away instead of a half one - and so Steve was forced to indulge in public transport.

"Get on, would ya," the bus driver snarled.

He was a large man with a massive moustache. Joseph had a moustache. He was Steve's dad, though Steve didn't really think of him that way; he was just a quiet, happy man in a lot of photographs that made his Ma cry. Steve stumbled onto the bus, trying not to wince as his arm hit painfully against the closing doors, and stared down the aisle.

Everyone went silent, or maybe it was just Steve's ears getting blocked again; Ma said it ran in the family. His eyes raked over the seats, but anytime they caught on an empty one, the person sitting to its right would put their hand over it protectively, either because they had a friend at the next stop or because they just didn't like Steve. He chose to pretend it was always the former.

He didn't see Jane. His heart was thumping in his ears, which was stupid, because his dad had been in the army and he was a strong man and he'd even _died_ over there, hit by a grenade, but Steve wasn't supposed to know that, he'd read it in a file when his mom was at work because she was always at work.

Steve hadn't known what a grenade was, so he had looked it up, and it turned out it was a tiny silver thing that soldiers could carry in their pockets, but when they threw it on the ground it exploded, and Steve's dad had exploded too. Joseph was very brave to get blown up, and here Steve was, terrified to pick a seat.

Eventually, he slumped down in one that had no other occupant. He pulled his earphones out of his pocket and put them in, and began listening to Michael Jackson.

He'd got the music off one of Sarah's old CDs in the attic because he liked it so much. Sometimes when Sarah didn't know Steve was downstairs she'd sing Michael Jackson in the kitchen while she was washing the dishes. Steve liked hearing her sing; she was a person who thought she was horrible but was actually very nice. Her voice was too weak to be Madonna, but she could pass herself in church, though some of the songs were very high and hurt Steve's throat to sing, so she told him to mouth them sometimes and not tell Father Coulson.

A few stops - and Michael Jackson songs - later, Steve heard a loud thwack. He felt something slimy on the back of his neck. Like a novice, he reached his hand up, and found that someone had threw a banana at his head. One of his earphones was still in, but Michael Jackson could not drown out the sound of laughter that rocked through the bus.

The tips of Steve's ears - and his neck - and his face - and everywhere above his waist - started blazing.

He just wanted to crawl up and _die._ He wanted to go home to his mother and get some hot cocoa and never go to school again.

His grandpa had dropped out of school at twelve and he owned a grocer's his whole life and left a lot of money behind when he died (but it was all gone now; Steve was pretty sure his Ma spent it to get rid of the tuberculosis, the first time it hit her son in the middle of winter).

He didn't even need to go to middle school - he was a smart kid. His Ma could train him up in the hospital and he could be a nurse or something. Yeah, that would work. Nurses were nice even though they worked too hard.

"Hey guys," a loud voice called out. "What did the banana do when it met Steve Rogers? It split!"

This pathetic joke made the dwindling laughter resurface with vigour. Steve turned around to glare at the perpetrator who was, of course, Clint Barton.

Steve hated Clint Barton. Mostly for the crappiness of that pun, but also because whilst Steve was dressed stiffly in a shirt and slacks, Clint was relaxing at the back of the bus in a purple hoodie, too-big jeans and scuffed Converse. The crazy girl Headmaster Fury had adopted from Russia the year before was beside Clint too, a devilish smirk on her face, though Steve doubted she understood English. Last Steve had heard, she was a pyromaniac, though he had no idea what that meant.

"Hey, come on," another voice intervened. "Leave him alone."

"Why?" Clint asked, blinking a few times. "It's not bothering him, is it, Rogers?"

The bus went quiet, and Steve realised he wasn't getting away with not answering. Slowly, without turning around, he shook his head no, and the rest of the bus ride went by without incident.

Steve was glad, because he didn't really want to drop out of school, no matter what he said. He had to make his Ma proud.

When he got to school, he and the others received their welcome packs, which included their timetables, locker numbers, and stern instructions not to break any of Headmaster Fury's Commandments lest you be burned at the stake (Steve was, admittedly, paraphrasing by using some of the words his Ma did when talking about Jesus and His Holy Father; they seemed to be found of fire. Kind of like Natasha Romanoff). The classes were not difficult, but they were embarrassing, because the teachers insisted on playing 'ice-breaker' games and Steve genuinely had nothing interesting to say about himself.

"Oh darling," Miss Emma Frost, his English teacher, cooed when Steve was the last to leave her classroom (his face was bright red and his books were all on the floor, because on the way out one of Clint Barton's friends had bumped into them and not stopped to pick them up). "Middle school's tough, huh?"

Miss Frost was most famous in Leavenworth High for being insanely pretty, which often shadowed her impeccable teaching ability to a disappointing degree. Steve, who had never been particularly interested in girls because he knew it would never happen, was still not oblivious to her beauty, and he stumbled over his words so pathetically that he only managed to spit out, "Yeah, thanks," before dashing out of her classroom for lunch. Miss Frost watched him go, concerned yet vaguely amused.

"Hey, Steve," Jane called out from her position at the head of a lunch table. "Come sit with us."

Steve grasped onto his lunch-bag, the sweat on his palms making the paper flake. He hoped no one would notice.

'Us' included Jane, recognisable as sin in her trademark ponytails and large, red-rimmed sunglasses that she wore because of her sensitivity to light, a condition that had cleared up in fifth grade but Jane still persisted in using as an excuse to wear her 'cool' sunglasses indoors; a girl to the right of Jane with dark brown hair scraped into a greasy ponytail, thick bangs hanging down over her face and with glasses that made her eyes look like a fly; and a boy who could only be described as _nerdy_ sitting across from the unknown girl, dressed in a sweater-vest and poking at a rag-nail on his thumb.

"This is Betty Ross," Jane said, gesturing to the girl, "and James Rhodes," gesturing to the boy. Steve lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave, and they reciprocated with even less energy, if that was possible.

"I didn't see you on the bus," Steve said, trying overly hard to sound casual and like it hadn't bothered him at all when really, the sickly sweet scent of banana had been lingering around him for the entirety of the day so far.

"Oh yeah," Jane said flippantly. She was better at sounding calm, even though she never looked it. Her eyebrows were in a continuous state of surprise, though that may have been due to her over-zealous plucking than any other factor. "I met Betty at physics camp over the summer, and we both didn't want to go into school alone on the first day, so her dad just drove me. He's a _general,_ Steve. He has a gun and everything."

"Cool," Steve said, as if his heart hadn't died a little in his chest because he had been alone. Painfully alone. On the first day of school. And he'd been hit by a banana, whereas Jane, his supposed best friend, was banana-free.

His shoes, once white, were well-worn and scuffed at the edges. Jane's were brown leather, and they shone in the sunlight. Suddenly, Steve was filled with an irrepressible amount of rage towards her, and it must've shown on his face, because she frowned.

"Sit down, Steve," she said. "Don't be so weird."

"I'm not being weird," Steve protested (he was, admittedly, being weird). "I just don't want to sit with you and your new best friends, okay?"

Jane rolled her eyes. That was a new thing she did; rolling her eyes. Probably because her dad did it at her mom all the time.

"Don't be such a baby," she said. (Incidentally, her mom said that to her dad a lot too.)

"'m not being a baby. I've got my _own_ friends."

"Fine," Jane snapped.

"Fine," Steve replied.

He stormed off with his brown paper bag. His eyes threatened with tears.

Steve _hated_ this stupid school, he hated Jane, he hated his Ma for making him go to school in the first place, and he hated his lunch, which was always disgusting and usually on mouldy bread, because Sarah couldn't afford to buy a new loaf and waste half of it because it was out of date, and also, she just didn't notice stuff like that because she was so tired all the time. Sick, too. She was a sick a lot, and Steve hated that as well.

He wasn't sure where he was going; Leavenworth Middle/High School (because the town was not large enough to warrant separate institutions) was much bigger than Leavenworth Elementary had been, and there were no smiling faces of the teachers and their assistants to make Steve's day any better. In a sick twist of fate, he found himself in the sports field.

It was probably the longest time he would spend in that sports field, because he much preferred to sit on the bleachers and chew morosely on his stale peanut butter sandwiches than sit through another hour of math class he wouldn't understand anyway, with people he hated. Even Jane was mean to him now, and Jane had been his friend for years.

Once he had finished his lunch and the anger had subsided somewhat, Steve strained to hear what sounded like a whimper coming from underneath the bleachers. With a frown he flopped himself over onto his stomach and peered between the gaps in the seats. Sure enough, there was another student underneath the bleachers, his jet-black hair sticking up worse than Steve's did in the morning, and his nails caked with dirt.

"Hey," Steve said. The boy ceased, his shoulders tensing, and did not look up. "Hey, you alright?"

"I'm fine," the boy replied. Though Steve was not an inherent people person, he knew enough to realise that the boy was lying.

"I'm coming down, alright?" Steve said. The boy did not answer, so Steve hopped down off the bleachers and made his way around the side of them.

The boy was curled up on himself, sitting with his knees folded against his chest and his shaking hands picking apart what appeared to be a tiny robot. He had a screwdriver tucked behind his ear, which was also grimy, and he was wearing a pair of jeans with a logo that Steve knew meant they were more than his Ma could afford and a nice sweater vest which had leather patches sewed onto the elbows. The boy rubbed at his face with great intensity, and, somewhat terrified, Steve opened his mouth to speak.

He was interrupted, for what wouldn't be the first time.

"It's hay-fever," the boy protested.

Steve raised an eyebrow. "In September?"

"I'm not _crying,_ like _._ If that's what you think."

Fair enough, Steve thought to himself. He gestured to the ground beside the boy, and with great hesitation, the boy nodded. Steve flung himself down on the hard earth, wincing slightly as his tailbone hit against the soil, and then turned to consider his new acquaintance.

His skin was taut and pulled across his face like a mask. To the side of his left eye there was what Steve initially thought to be a birthmark, but which he later realised was a streak of grease. His teeth were bright white, which was noticeable even though the boy did not smile as much as he smirked, and his hair lay in curls against his forehead. His eyes were wide like a doe's, and they were almost painfully feminine, big and brown and somewhat sad, and his eyelashes were as dark as the makeup his Ma wore for church. They were also very, very red.

A lurch appeared in Steve's stomach, and something compelled him to smile at the boy, so he did. The boy did not reciprocate, but his muscles relaxed minutely.

"Whatcha doing?" Steve asked. The boy shrugged. "You've got a robot."

"Yeah."

"It's pretty cool."

"I made it."

"No way!"

At the delight in Steve's voice the boy looked up with surprise and a wide grin, too big for his face, painted itself over his expression.

Mission accomplished.

"That's so awesome," Steve said. "I'd never be able to build anything like that."

"The other guys didn't like it," the boy murmured. Steve had only got his ears syringed at the nurse a week ago, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to hear it. "They called me a nerd."

"Hey," Steve said. "I'd like to be called nerd. It means you're smart, yeah?"

The boy rubbed at his eye with insistency. "I don't wanna be smart. People are mean to smart people."

"People are mean to short people too," Steve argued. "I mean, look at me. Ma says you could knock me over with a breath. You see this bruise here? Rumlow got me good and proper two weeks ago, it hasn't faded since. And this scar right here? Got that in third grade. Some kids were picking on Jane and I got in the middle and boom."

The boy looked at Steve. There were equal measures of respect and scepticism, but Steve was taking whatever offer of friendship he was given. He thrust his hand towards the boy.

"Steve Rogers," he said.

"Anthony Stark," the boy replied. (Steve decided not to ask him why he flinched at the handshake.) "But Mom calls me Tony."

"Nice to meet you, Tony."

Tony blinked a few times. "Yeah," he said, somewhat dazed. "You too, Rogers."

The name Tony Stark was familiar, and Steve fished his timetable out of his bag to check.

"We're in the same physics class," Steve told him.

"Not for long," Tony muttered. He scratched at the palm of his hand, so all that could be heard besides the screeching of the oven-birds was the light _scratch-scratch-scratch_ of fingernails against skin. "Dad wants me to get into all advanced classes like he was."

"Oh." Steve knew he wasn't getting into any advanced classes. It did not make him sad; it was simply a fact of life, like his height and his heart. He'd learned to live with it. "Well, you're smart enough to do it."

Tony let out a little laugh that an eleven-year-old Steve would not recognise as bitter, but that a sixteen-year-old Steve would tear up at the memory of.

"Hope so," Tony said, and that was that; the beginning of Steve Rogers' first wilfully-entered yet reluctant friendship.

They sat in companionable silence for the rest of the period, because Tony did not feel like going to English and Steve did not feel like going to maths and while they contemplated switching places, they soon realised they were like day and night and therefore could not pull it off without getting suspended. By two o'clock in the afternoon, Tony had warmed up to Steve enough to pass him some of his fancy salad.

"Does your mom make this?" Steve asked. When Tony  had his back turned, he spat the leaves out on the grass.

"My nanny does," Tony replied. He passed Steve a carton of apple juice.

"It's..."

"Disgusting. Why do you think I gave it to you?"

Steve almost got up and walked away, but a thought caught him before he could; how it would feel to have your lunch made by someone who was not your parent; and so he stayed.

"I've got peanut butter cups," Steve said, "if you wanted them."

That wide smile appeared on Tony's face once more, and he happily helped himself to all of Steve's peanut butter cups, which wasn't that big of a deal because Steve didn't think he'd be making any more friends that day anyway. Tony ate as if he had never eaten before, and Steve almost warned him not to eat the peanut butter so quickly but didn't, and burst into laughter at the sight of Tony's green face.

"I hate you so much right now," Tony groaned, grabbing onto his stomach with one hand and Steve's shirt with the other. Steve was in the process of trying to drag them both to physics class which was monumentally difficult. Tony was not a large boy, but he was bigger than Steve as everyone tended to be, and so he weighed about twice what Steve did after a large meal. Nevertheless, Steve was determined, and they reached physics class with thirty seconds to spare.

Unfortunately, those were to be the worst thirty seconds of Steve's young life thus far.

"Hey Rogers."

Steve winced and shoved some books under his desk. Tony crumpled inwards once again at the sound of Rumlow's voice ricocheting through the small, stuffy classroom, and any hope Steve had of being defended by his new friend evaporated (this was also the first time Steve thought, _'Seriously?'_ to himself in regards to Tony Stark; a truly monumental instance to add to his list of firsts).

Rumlow was flanked by Schmidt, who had unfortunately moved back to Leavenworth after being absent for three years of elementary school, and Pierce, who had always been a part of the school background for as long as Steve had suffered through education. The sad thing was that Pierce was very smart; it was like Smart, Dumb and Dumber when the three of them walked up.

This did not, however, make the words that left their mouth any less hurtful.

"Who's this, Rogers?" Schmidt asked. He leaned his hand on the desk, right on top of Tony's books, and when Tony -  another rookie mistake - went to grab them the pages filled with equations ripped sharply in half.

Steve furrowed his eyebrows at Schmidt, ready to say a really pathetic comeback but at least it wasn't submission, and instead watched in horror as Tony's eyes filled up.

"Aw," Rumlow crooned. "Did we make your little buddy cry?"

"Tony," Steve hissed, digging the other boy in the stomach with his elbow. "You're embarrassing me."

Tony did not look at Steve, but it was clear he had heard him, for his bottom lip began to quiver and-

"Are you joking me," Steve mumbled under his breath, mostly to himself but maybe to God as well, as he watched Tony Stark try desperately hard not to let the tear that had perched on his long eyelash fall down his cheek.

"Man up," Steve hissed at Tony.

Silence lingered over the classroom, and that was the exact moment that Steve Rogers' first day of middle school went to shit.

A muscle in Tony's jaw jumped. He scratched once more at the palm of his hand, so harshly that the skin bust and blood seeped into the wrinkles on his hand, and pushed himself up out of his stool, his hand working in spasms.

"Tony?" Steve said. He touched the sleeve of Tony's blazer, wondering if maybe, just maybe, Tony would defend him.

Tony punched Steve square in the nose.

Rumlow, Pierce and Schmidt burst into howling laughter. Although his ears were ringing, Steve could still pick up the mutterings of Clint Barton and the weirdo Russian girl, who had seated themselves behind Steve and Tony, as they discussed the schematics of the punch.

"Poor control," the Russian girl murmured in a thick accent.

"Good drive, though," Clint Barton argued.

Steve hated Clint Barton.

"Tony Stark!" the loud and scandalised voice of the physics teacher - Ms. Jean Grey - echoed through Steve's ringing ears. His eyes began to water at the same time as his nose began to swell, and Tony, now nursing his knuckles, snapped back at Steve, "Man up."

Ms. Grey made her way over to the boys, her red stilettos hitting sharply against the floor.

"You're both coming to the headmaster," she told them, grabbing them by the scruff of their necks. "Everyone else, sit down and be quiet, and don't do anything stupid. I'll know if you do."

"Yeah, Clint," another boy - Steve vaguely recognised him as James Barnes - leaned over his desk. His hair was longer than Steve's and it fell over his eyes, which were grey or blue. Steve couldn't decide. "She's got freaky psychic powers. She probably already knows you popped a boner in Miss. Frost's class."

Clint Barton's eyes grew. "You weren't supposed to tell people that!" he whisper-yelled.

"Everyone could see it, Clint," Russian Girl said, diplomatically.

"Well, not everyone," Barnes replied, holding his fingers about three inches apart. "Kinda teeny, eh, Barton?"

"Mister Barnes!" Ms. Grey exclaimed as the class once again burst into raucous laughter. Barnes leaned back on his seat before realising it was a stool, and promptly fell off. The majority of the class's faces were purple by this stage, and so was Ms. Grey's, but for a different reason. "I'll deal with you when I get back, mister. Now come on, you two."

As Ms. Grey pulled Steve out of the classroom, he had just enough time to see Barnes, once again upright on his stool, shoot him a wink.

-

Mr. Xavier really wanted to let out a loud, drawn out sigh, but unfortunately he had the self control to prevent it.

"So you got taken to Headmaster Fury by Ms. Grey," Mr. Xavier said. Steve nodded yes. "And then what happened?"

"Well, my nose was really sore," Steve explained, "and we sat and talked to Mr. Fury for ages. Mr. Fury asked Tony why he did it, and Tony said I said something that reminded him of someone and he lost it, and Mr. Fury made like this humming noise and said he knew Tony's dad, or something, whatever that meant. So Tony said sorry to me and I said it was okay, it wasn't my first broken nose, and they let Tony go and then the school nurse came in and took away the tissue I'd been holding to my nose and I saw the blood and it was a lot of blood so I just - kinda - was sick all over Mr. Fury. So he sent me to you."

Mr. Xavier blinked a few times fast.

"You do realise we need to phone your mother, right?" he said gently. "I mean, you need medical attention. Quite urgently, from the looks of it."

Steve sighed. "Yeah, I know," he said.

"Are you worried she might be angry at you?"

"What? No," Steve said, because he needed to shut that down right there. He knew how teachers could be, and his Ma might be tired and sad and sick all the time, but she was not like _that_. "No. She'll be worried, but not really surprised."

Mr. Xavier tapped his fingers against the arm of his wheelchair.

"This has happened before, I assume?"

Steve nodded. A few times. Three times. It was cool though because it meant Steve had a bump in his nose like his dad had.

His dad had broken his nose in the army. He'd gotten it hit with the butt of another guy's rifle. And before that his dad had broken it in a bar fight, which Sarah got very annoyed talking about, so Steve didn't bring it up. The army stuff, though. That was cool.

Teacher and student sat in comfortable silence for the next fifteen minutes, waiting for Sarah to arrive. When she did, she was, as Steve had predicted, in her scrubs which were stained with various substances, and her hair was scraped back in a greasy ponytail and her hands were shaking like they did sometimes after work when someone died. She still managed a smile, though, and when she placed her hand on Steve's shoulder it became miraculously steady, and he melted into her touch.

On the walk to the hospital - because Leavenworth was not a big enough town to warrant buying a car, and they couldn't afford to anyway - Steve sniffed his nose, and Sarah did too.

"Are you not going to ask if I had a good day?" Steve asked, trying to lighten the mood, but his tone was all wrong so it just sounded sad. Sarah let out a little laugh anyway.

"Did you have a good day, sweetheart?"

Steve shrugged. "It was alright. I made a friend."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "You did?"

"Yeah. His name is Tony and he makes cool robots."

"Tony? Isn't that the name of the boy who..."

"Yeah, but we're cool now. I just reminded him of his Dad."

Sarah's lips went into a line. "What's Tony's second name, Stevie?"

"Stark." Her lips became thinner. "Do you know him, Ma?"

"Yeah," she said. Her hands were shaking again, even when they brushed against Steve's when they walked. "I knew him in high school. I haven't spoken to him since you were about five, though."

"Oh," Steve said. He thought for a moment. "Did I know Tony when I was five, Ma?"

"No," she said shortly, and because it was so uncharacteristic for Sarah not to expand, Steve remained quiet until they got to the hospital.

He got a sticker from the nice nurse, and the doctor called him a 'tough cookie,' so all in all, it wasn't a horrible day.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony wasn't an awful friend.

Sometimes he brought in nice food, like fancy meringues that were chewy in the middle and didn't flake apart when you touched them. Some days he helped Steve out with maths (most days) even if he did roll his eyes when he did it. He picked a lot at the palm of his hand and made it bleed so often the school nurse pulled him to the side and said something that made him go very red, but he never touched Steve with it because he knew Steve didn't like blood.

It was a little annoying how Tony didn't even try in games. He just stood in the middle of the volleyball court pushing his thick glasses up his nose, and he didn't even _need_ glasses, just wore them to look smarter, which annoyed Steve, because Tony was plenty smart enough. Steve had worked out pretty early on that if you were good at sports in school everybody liked you, and so he tried his absolute best, even if his body didn't exactly agree with him. He ended up spluttering on the floor four days out of five before Mr. Howlett, the P.E. teacher, suggested that it might be best for him to sit on the bench with Tony and Reed Richards.

On his third day of sitting squished between Tony Stark and Reed Richards, who talked very loudly over the top of him as if he wasn't there about things that most adults wouldn't understand, never mind kids, Steve Rogers decided he'd had enough of Tony Stark's glasses, and he'd had enough of Reed Richards gawking at him when he said he didn't understand, and he'd had enough of Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton smirking at each other when he walked past, knowing he'd get hit in the face with the ball on the way out. He'd had enough of all of them, and so he wasn't going to go home on the school bus, and he wasn't going to go around to Tony's house to play (even though he'd never actually been invited, it had to have been coming) and he wasn't going to go home and play on his Gameboy, either. He was going to go to the playpark alone, and he was going to go on the monkey bars, and he was going to get big and strong so nobody could ever smirk about him ever again.

Tony leaned over to him about halfway through the volleyball match and said, "Pst, Rogers."

Steve did not respond, so Tony tried again, this time with the assistance of Reed Richards.

"Pst, Rogers," they both said. Steve still did not reply, focusing instead on the volleyball game. The players were choosing who they wanted to serve for their team; as far as Steve could tell, and he was usually pretty good at picking up rules for games even if he couldn't play them, this was the make or break shot, the one chance the blue team had for a victory. The Reds, headed up by Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff as per usual, were looking rather smug. It would be their tenth straight victory, and Clint Barton had even washed his P.E. kit for the occasion. His shirt was a creamy white rather than a stained brown for once.

"Obviously Wilson's not going to do it," Betty Ross, who was actually rather sporty, muttered to Jane, who was actually rather not, though admittedly better than Steve. Betty Ross tended not to shout out her opinions like the majority of their classmates did, even when they were nice opinions, and even when they were the truth. Steve liked that about her.

"Wilson wouldn't know what to do with a ball if it hit him in the face," Jane replied. She paused for a second, then laughed. "You know what I mean."

It was funny because Samuel T. Wilson - the guy Steve only knew for picking his nose and wiping it on Steve's history textbook in fourth grade - got hit in the face with a ball every single lesson without fail. The two girls giggled to each other, but Steve, still smarting a little and knowing there was a mark on his forehead from a football, didn't feel like it was very funny.

In the background, Ben Grimm, reluctant associate of Reed Richards, James Rhodes, one of Jane's new friends, Sue Storm, future valedictorian, and James Barnes, class clown were in a heated discussion. It lasted for a few moments before Mr. Howlett sent over an angry glare, which was more than enough to make the group dissolve into rock-paper-scissors, which decided the person to serve would be James Barnes.

In retrospect, this was a good decision by the hands of fate. James Rhodes could hardly see for his recently diagnosed near-sightedness, Ben Grimm always appeared stoned, and Sue Storm, though intelligent and refined, spent more time eating her hair than paying attention to the game. James Barnes, on the other hand, was the complete opposite.

Steve knew James Barnes in the same way as many of Leavenworth's students did; vaguely, and so not at all. He knew _of_ him, of course he did. Even in elementary, James Barnes had been the first across the line at running races, the guy going up on stage to collect his medals for academic excellence, the boy who had to beg the teachers not to put him up a grade and cause him to move away from his friends.

Steve knew Barnes in the kind of way that, if he saw him in the dilapidated shopping centre outside Leavenworth (unlikely, considering Sarah's lack of a car), he wouldn't know whether to say hi, given they'd been in the same class for a number of years, or ignore him, given the greatest conversation they had had was 'hi, can I borrow your eraser?' and a grunt in response.

He had always admired him, though. Bucky - because that was what his friends called him lately, Bucky, because they all said there were too many Jameses to stick with the one name - was good at everything, it seemed, and all the girls giggled when he talked to them (Jane had once fallen off a fence when Bucky grinned at her, which Steve thought was slightly dramatic but the girls did not). Steve watched him carefully as he came up to the line, watched as his arms flexed around the volleyball, observed him as he stood, legs slightly apart, one eye closed as he eyed up the net...

At the last moment, instead of the nice, arching serve that he seemed intent on making, Barnes jumped into the air and spiked the ball into the ground on the other side of the net.

The other team never stood a chance.

Around him, half of the hall that housed Team Blue began cheering ecstatically. Reed Richards and Tony, always supporters of the underdog, rushed into the swell of the team and began whooping along with the rest of them. Together, James Rhodes and Sam 'Booger' Wilson tried to lift Bucky up in celebration, but soon realised their arms were too weak even to do that, and settled for hitting him on the back instead.

Bucky Barnes was a hero, even to Mr. Howlett, who was smiling in the corner for what must've been the first time in seventy years. A grin seemed unusual on his face, like there should've been cobwebs between his lips or dust falling from his cheeks, but Steve was glad to see it, and he couldn't wait to tell his Ma when he got home (his Ma had gone to school with Mr. Howlett, and she still refused to tell Steve his first name in case he used it disrespectfully and Mr. Howlett murdered him or something). In the commotion, most of his classmates did not hear the bell for the end of the school day, but Steve, who eagerly checked his watch at least three times every five minutes, was already out the door before anyone else realised.

At the tip of Leavenworth town, there was a new playground, recently refurbished with the meagre money the town council had left following last year's storms that had torn through the crops. It wasn't a particularly massive park, and compared to the ones Tony described in New York and big cities like that it was positively puny, but Steve appreciated it for what it was; something new and unexpected in a town where nothing was ever new or unexpected. It only took him a little while to walk - it wouldn't have taken so long but his feet were sore from his too-tight shoes - and before long he was at the bottom of the jungle gym, looking up at it with butterflies catapulting in his stomach.

A mountain might've been how someone would have described it, but Steve wasn't someone. He was shorter even than his Ma, who was very short, and skinnier than her too, and she was very skinny, so skinny it made the doctors she worked with sweat a little when she walked past. To Steve, the jungle gym was not only a mountain, but a volcano, intent on wiping him out even if it took a few hundred years for it to do so.

The jungle gym had a rope ladder to clamber up to the top, and a big winding slide that was closed in on all sides for you to cry your way to the bottom. Steve didn't like small spaces, but he didn't like being made fun of for having no upper body strength either, and so he was determined to reach the top of the jungle gym and scream as he slid down the slide if it killed him (and it may well do). Ma wouldn't be home for hours yet, and he'd finished his homework in school, so he wouldn't be missed, and he wouldn't be wasting time, for Steve was the kind of eleven year old who worried about wasting time.

Around the top of the jungle gym there was a tall fence made out of wood that blocked whatever was up there from view. Curiosity and determination in equal measures encouraged Steve to spit on his hands like he'd seen people on TV do and grab onto the rope. Almost immediately he let go, feeling the splintering threads dig into his soft palms, but then he remembered his dad, and how he'd got blown up into a million pieces and how his Ma didn't even get to see the body (why would you want to, anyway he wondered).

Steve jutted out his jaw and grabbed onto the rope, ignoring the pain that shot through his arms as a result. He began pulling himself up, wrapping his spindly legs around the ladder and making sure he was absolutely a hundred percent sure he was secure before stepping up onto the next rung. He didn't want to die like Joseph did and leave his Ma all alone; that wouldn't be fair, not when she was so nice and worked so hard so he could go to school and watch Spongebob and eat and things like that.

He was halfway up when he realised there was another boy in the playground. The boy could've just arrived or he could've been sitting inside the tunnel out of sight, but either way Steve didn't have time to recognise anything about him except for his brown hair, longer than Steve's so it covered his eyes. Steve turned his attention back to the ladder and continued pulling himself up, spurred on by the potential teasing of the boy, though the boy said nothing.

With a wheeze, Steve pulled himself onto the wooden platform, making absolutely positively sure that his legs and every other limb was securely inside the 'tower' before flopping onto his back and trying to regain some semblance of normal breathing. He had an inhaler in school but the school nurse (or rather, Charles Xavier, for the school did not have the budget for a full time nurse) kept it, and he had an inhaler at home but that was at home, and so he wanted to panic a little bit but he knew that would just make it worse so he lay there, staring at the turreted roof of the jungle gym, trying to count his breaths.

When the burning in his lungs subsided and his blood stopped boiling in his veins Steve swallowed thickly and opened his eyes, only to be greeted by the sight of a somewhat familiar face in the musty darkness. He thought about screaming, but only had time to jump back and gasp a little, recognising almost immediately that it was the crazy Russian girl that lived with Fury now.

"Don't call her that," Sarah had chastised him, despite Steve's assurances that it was true; the girl was certifiably insane. "That's not nice. Her parents died in a fire when she was very young, and a nice soldier took her to the orphanage where Fury found her. If you'd seen the things she had, you'd be a little weird too." (Steve appreciated his Ma pretending that he wasn't weird already.)

"You're going to fall," Natasha Romanoff  said, in her heavily laden accent. Steve looked behind him and saw that he was close to the 'door' of the tower; a break in the wooden fence that allowed you to swing from rope to rope and get to the next structure.

Steve wasn't exactly sure why he took it as a threat. He supposed it was probably at least partly to do with the shine in Natasha Romanoff's eyes, which were the colour of snakes you saw in cartoons but not real life. Bright green with big bits of black in them like beetles. She had a smirk on her face like a Cheshire cat and Steve couldn't help but remember the first time he watched _Alice in Wonderland_ and had to sleep beside his Ma for five days afterwards because of nightmares. Natasha Romanoff had really red hair, though it wasn't as much red as it was orange, and if anybody mentioned it she found creative ways to make their life a misery.

She was terrifying, but Steve wasn't moving. He had as much right to be there as anyone else, and for some reason, he found himself saying that, though he wasn't an inherently rude person.

"I've as much right to be here as you," Steve told her, hoping the waver in his voice was only in his head and she couldn't hear it. In the diminished sunlight her cheekbones were daggers. When he looked down, he noticed with a gulp that her fingernails were long and had been filed into triangles. He didn't dare ask why.

She didn't speak. She just sat there, slowing increasing her smile to show Steve her teeth, though the front one was missing. Clint Barton said she tore it out herself, no crying or anything. Steve would believe it.

Finally, she opened her chapped lips. They were the shape of a heart when they were closed, a sheep's heart. Sarah had made that for dinner once. Steve was sick.

"Leave me alone," she said, so simply and with no change in expression that Steve couldn't garner her meaning. He inclined his head to the side.

"What?" he asked.

"Leave me, alone," she repeated, slower this time, her smirk growing. Steve still couldn't grasp what she was insinuating; was this her jungle gym? Had her adoptive father paid for the town to build it? He doubted that. Sarah always said to stand his ground where he could, and where he fell, he should always stand up (he couldn't stand up in the jungle gym; the roof was very low, but he understood now that some things were metaphorical).

"No," Steve said. "I have as much right to be here as you."

The smirk disappeared slightly, but not enough to concern.

"Leave. Me. Alone," she said once more, clearly enunciating the words as if Steve was the one who had just learnt the language. Steve shook his head and folded his arms, signalling his intent to stay.

"I have as much right to be here as-"

Natasha Romanoff moved quicker than a snake, and with one sharp touch to his shoulder he felt himself falling backwards, through the exit. He hit against the rope ladders that led to the other section and tried to grip them, slowing down his descent, but not enough.

With a dull thud, he hit the ground face first. The warm, soft tarmac smell filled his recently healed nose, and a small pool of blood materialised before his eyes. He reached his fingers up to touch and found the contour of his nose was all wrong; more like an 's' than an 'l.'

He didn't freak out. This had happened before. His brain felt like it had been all shook up in his head, like tomatoes in a blender, but he didn't freak out. This had happened before.

He'd never been pushed from a jungle gym before now though. That was new.

He glanced up at the tower and saw Natasha Romanoff's small, pretty and dangerous face, and the wildness of her red hair as she clapped a hand to her mouth and disappeared back behind the wooden fence.

Steve's nose hurt. It hurt a lot, actually. He didn't know how to set a nose; his Ma did, but she was at work, and all the other nurses were at work or home and he didn't have their number, only Mary's, but she was dead now. She'd been sixty-eight and she'd fallen down her stairs and crack. There it was. Done and dusted, just like Joseph.

A lot of very sad things happened to Steve's Ma. He hoped he wouldn't be one of them.

This thought made Steve roll over onto his side away from the blood. The change in gravity made his nose into a dull ache, and he felt liquid on his lips and running down the valley of his cheekbones. Although his ears were ringing he could hear footsteps thumping towards him, and he opened his eyes to see brown hair and eyes. Eyes that were blue, or else grey. He couldn't decide.

"Hey, kid? Hey, can you hear me?"

Steve tried to nod his head but couldn't. He settled for a thumbs up.

"What happened?" the boy said. The boy with grey-blue eyes and hair longer and browner than Steve's. The boy who sat at the back of his physics class and the one everyone wanted to have at least one conversation with to make their day. Steve attempted to answer, but then realised James Barnes wasn't asking him, he was asking Natasha Romanoff.

Natasha Romanoff was pale, even paler than usual, and Steve could tell even under her patchy orange makeup. The eyeliner on her eyes that was always smudged had made its way down to the apple of her cheek, but other than that, she seemed relatively unperturbed, probably because Steve wasn't dead.

"He wouldn't leave, so I pushed him," she replied, popping her bubblegum in the obnoxious way she did in Maths class on a Friday morning.

James Barnes' grey-blue eyes got wider. Natasha Romanoff groaned.

"I didn't mean for him to fall, duh," she said. Steve didn't think it was duh at all considering she'd made him fall. "I just wanted to push him and the dumbo lost his balance and fell off."

"My nose hurts," Steve mumbled, just low enough that James Barnes could hear and Natasha Romanoff could not. James Barnes was very close to him, hovering a big ruler's length away from his head, his lips all shiny and his face so pale you could see veins. James Barnes smelt nice, like antibacterial soap, or hand-wash that Steve's Ma used in the hospital.

Barnes reached his hand out and Steve smacked it away. He felt bad about it immediately, and tried to apologise, but he didn't know why he was apologising when it was Barnes' pyromaniac friend who'd pushed him off the jungle gym (did pyromaniac mean Natasha Romanoff liked pushing people off things?). Barnes held his hands up in surrender and whispered 'sorry.'

Steve kind of liked him, not going to lie.

"I won't hurt you," Barnes promised. He had a voice like Mr. Xavier's except higher and more like a whistle because Barnes was also missing a front tooth, but the opposite one to Romanoff, so they were a matched set. "I know how to set a nose. My dad breaks his all the time."

"My Ma knows how to do it," Steve said, pushing himself up onto his butt. He wiped at his nose with his sleeve, knowing his Ma knew how to get blood out of things like shirts. "Ma's a nurse. I need to get home to Ma."

"Alright," Barnes agreed easily. "Let me just fix it, just a little." He was trying very hard to keep his voice steady. Steve noticed his own reflection in the pupils of those grey-blue eyes. He'd broken his nose before, but never this bad. It was all over on one side of his face. He almost fainted, but didn't, because this was James Barnes, and he'd never live it down.

"Okay," Steve said. "Just a little."

"Just a little."

"Just hurry up," Natasha Romanoff said in the background. She was tapping her foot impatiently against the tarmac and looking everywhere but at Steve. "He's freaking me out."

"I'm freaking you out?" Steve repeated. James Barnes winced. Even Barnes was scared of Romanoff, but Steve was just sick of her. "You pushed me off the jungle gym!"

Natasha Romanoff bit at a rag-nail on her thumb and shrugged. She still didn't look at him. Steve was so angry he didn't even feel Barnes touching his nose and pushing it to the left until he'd done it, and the pain nearly made Steve pass out all over again.

"Where do you live?" Barnes asked, with increasing insistency. Steve told him. "My house is closer," Barnes said, "and my mom will know what to do. We have plasters and bandages."

"'m not meant to go to strangers' houses," Steve said. In the background, Natasha Romanoff rolled her eyes, but then looked as if she was about to vomit at the same time. It made her pretty face look like a Picasso painting, and it cheered Steve up a little bit.

"Is it far away?" Steve asked Barnes.

"No," Barnes answered. Steve raised an eyebrow. "Just a little walk."

"Just a little walk?"

"Just a little bit. Swear."

"Is she coming?"

Barnes glanced at Romanoff, who didn't look back.

"No, she's not coming."

"She feels sick."

"Just a little bit," Barnes confirmed.

"Just a little bit," Steve repeated.

They smiled at each other. It was weird.

Barnes' house was closer than Steve's, and it was nestled in between two hills.

"If you go to the top of that hill," Steve told Barnes, who was holding him up just like Steve had when he dragged Tony to physics that first day, "you can see my house."

"If you squint your eyes?" Barnes asked.

"Yeah. If you squint them and rub a little bit."

"What does rubbing do?"

"Makes the lenses in your eyeball work better."

"Really?"

"Yeah. A little bit."

Barnes' house was a little different than Steve's. It's walls were made of big grey stones and held together by white stuff that looked like chalk. Barnes said, "The first settlers built this house, just before they built the cornfields," and Steve liked him so much by this point he didn't bother to correct him that you plant a cornfield. There was a big thick wooden door that had a tiny little window with grey bars across it so Barnes' mom could see who was at the door when his da was out. That's how the door opened and that's how Barnes' mom, who Barnes said was called Winnie, knew who was there.

"Oh my goodness," she said when she saw Steve's nose. Steve tried to smile, to make a good impression, but his teeth were covered in blood and it just made her say, "Oh my goodness," again, but with more emphasis on the goodness. She dragged Steve into the kitchen, completely ignoring her son who pulled the thick door closed behind him. The only thing she said to Barnes was, "Go keep an eye on your sisters," which was what Steve's Ma told patients' kids when she didn't want them to see what was going on.

Steve knew all the nurses' tricks. He was basically a nurse himself, even if he was too young.

"Oh my darling," Winnie said. She bustled around the kitchen and stepped on top of a big bag of cat food to get to the cupboard with a first aid kit in it. The black and white cat stood in the door of the kitchen meowing furiously at the intrusion. Steve waved at it, and it hissed.

"How did this happen, darling?" she asked him, speaking just like his Ma but softer and less tired-like. "Did someone hit you?"

"Yeah, but not today," Steve replied. "I fell off the jungle gym today."

Winnie paused for a moment as she sterilised the bandages. "You fell off the jungle gym?"

"Yes."

"Were you pushed?"

"Just a little bit."

"Then you didn't fall, you were pushed. Who pushed you?"

Steve stopped for a moment. "No one," he said. "I meant that I pushed myself. I lost grip and I fell and hurt myself a little bit."

"Just a little bit?" Winnie said with a smile. Steve wondered if he sounded like Barnes when he said that.

"Just a little bit," he said once more, to test the theory. Winnie grinned, so he must've sounded like Barnes.

Steve liked sounding like James Barnes. James Barnes was a cool guy.

Winnie got her fingers and pushed a little bit at the side of Steve's nose. He tried not to cry but it was hard, and when Winnie's hand came away it was wet but she didn't say.

"You must be a very fast healer," she said. "I think the blood's clotted around the bone already."

"Is that a good thing?" Steve asked her.

"It means you might have a little bump in your nose, but there's nothing I can do about that."

That was a good thing. Steve would look even more like Joseph. People would think he was a soldier who'd been in bar fights and got hit with the butt of a rifle. He began to wonder if he should've told Winnie that story instead of falling off a jungle gym. It would've made him seem more heroic.

"I'm still going to bandage you up," Winnie said. She patted the dining room table and gestured for Steve to jump up. He complied, even though it was difficult and his legs were swinging. He was glad to sit down. "You're bleeding still. What's your name, pet?"

"Steven Grant Rogers," Steve recited. "But Ma calls me Steve. No one calls me Grant."

"Alright, Steve," Winnie said. "Where is your Ma at the moment?"

"She's at work," he replied. "She's a nurse at the hospital. It's a very important job."

"It is indeed," Winnie said. "Would your mommy be okay with you staying here for an hour or so until I keep an eye on you?"

Barnes was in the doorway of the kitchen. The black and white cat was in his arms, and it was snuggling into his neck. He was nodding at Steve and mouthing 'yes,' so of course Steve said, "Yeah, she'd be okay with it."

Barnes had a great smile, even with a missing tooth.

Steve met all the Barnes family that night; he met Bucky's sisters, Mary and Delilah, and he met Bucky's dad George, who gave him a Spongebob plaster for his scraped knees and jokingly chastised Winnie for missing such a grave injury and focusing on his nose. Mary was very pretty and so was Delilah. They looked just like Bucky who was pretty too in the way some boys are. Mary sat in front of the fire with the cat and buried her face into its fur and Delilah sat in the corner of the sofa with her Gameboy asking Steve constantly if he wanted to challenge her and getting annoyed if he won, even if Winnie said Steve was a guest so he should be allowed to win.

Winnie must've phoned the hospital because about seven o'clock she came into the living room and said that Sarah would be coming to pick Steve up after work.

"Aw no," Bucky groaned, grabbing onto Steve's thin wrist and royally messing up his Mario Kart streak. "When's that?"

"Midnight," Steve and Winnie said at the same time, and with a wide grin Bucky grabbed Steve once more and dragged him off the sofa.

"I need to show you my room!" he told him excitedly. Steve couldn't quite understand it. Bucky - because that was what he was supposed to call him now, Bucky - seemed like he actually wanted Steve with him even though he had a million other friends he could play Mario Kart with. He always sat really close to Steve on the sofa and he gave Steve half of his roast beef when Steve had finished his because he could tell from Steve's face he had enjoyed it.

Steve had never really been wanted before, not by anyone who wasn't his Ma. Now he was wanted by Bucky, and Delilah wanted to play with him too and Mary even warmed up to him once the cat did. George and Winnie smiled at him so nicely even when they were glaring at each other (none of the Barnes kids seemed to notice that, and so Steve chose to ignore it, not really knowing how moms and dads were supposed to act together).

About half an hour before Sarah was due to come Bucky and Steve went and sat out on the deck in the porch swing. It was weird and it was awkward and they couldn't think of a thing to say so they just grinned at each other in the darkness. The magic of this new thing; the first time Steve, secretly pleased, had been invited to someone's house and then, with slight trepidation, their room. Bucky had more toys than Steve had ever seen, even in Walmart, but they didn't play with any of them. Instead they sat at George's old desk and played Tic-Tac-Toe and talked about school and Bucky even said he'd choose Steve first for his volleyball team the next time they had games.

When Sarah finally arrived Steve was faced with a feeling in the pit of his stomach that he'd never before experienced; disappointment at the prospect of going home with his mother. Nevertheless he was a good child and so didn't kick up a fuss, even if he did tear up a little on the walk home and felt the tears go to chill on his cheeks.

When he clambered into bed and kissed Sarah goodnight, he listened until he heard the soft click of her bedroom door and then buried his face into the pillow, screaming in delight and kicking his feet under the covers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And a million years later, I resurface ....  
> So sorry about the wait for this chapter! School and work have been consuming my life and my inspiration, but I hope to catch up on my writing now that everything has calmed down a bit! Thank you once again to everyone who has commented and left kudos; each email I get with some feedback from you guys is another hour I spend writing, so thank you!!!


	3. Chapter 3

The bus trip to school the next day was just a little bit less daunting. As the cornfields sped past the window, Steve caught a whiff of the overwhelming linger of George Barnes' aftershave, a scent that still lurked from the five minutes he had spent with the man comparing battle scars (George's were more impressive only because he had had years to acquire them, and he had actually been in the army, which was pretty cool). When his mother returned from the hospital she attempted, to no great success, to remove the Spongebob sticky plasters on Steve's knees. Finally she conceded, and as he let his feet dangle above the floor, he could feel the stickiness binding the skin on his knee together.

Bucky didn't sit with him on the bus that day, but Steve hadn't expected him to. Bucky's group was very strategic, and if he left to sit beside someone new the result would be catastrophic. Steve instead sat, as per usual, alone, until such a point where a student from another school who rode the same bus squeezed herself beside him because even Steve was a better option than standing up for the majority of the short journey.

Recess came, though it still wasn't much like recess without the playground to retreat to. Steve didn't know quite what to do with himself; whilst most Leavenworth Middle School students had friends to discuss the football games with or play Scrabble, he had only Tony, who spent most of his time conversing with Reed Richards about incomprehensible things, or when he wasn't talking to Reed Richards, staring at the back of his head. There came a point in Maths class where Steve had asked Tony three times for an eraser to receive no response, and had finally griped, "If you're so fond of the back of his head, you should marry him." (Tony, to Steve's surprise, had heard that particular complaint loud and clear though the previous questions were not received, and went a rather impressive shade of purple in response.)

Gym was before home on a Tuesday, much to the students and Mr Howlett's disgust, who both wanted very much to get some rest before they toppled over from exhaustion. The strain made Mr Howlett more angry than normal, causing him to spit instructions instead of merely grumble them. On days such as these, it was anybody's guess what kind of elaborate 'game' he would come up with to torture them; rumour had it that three years ago he made a kid climb one of the wooden beams and laughed when they fell with a thump to the ground, which was thankfully padded (of course, the stories varied so widely from the ground being padded to Mr Howlett forcing the boy to do it outside on the hard gravel; if the latter were true Steve was surprised the rumours didn't say the boy died of brain damage as a result).

Steve sat in his too-small red shorts in between Reed Richards and Tony, his least favourite position to be. He had found that if he sat to the side of either one of them and let the two sit together he was ignored, but that was infinitely better than being talked (or stared) over. Steve sat with his face in his hands and a frown between his eyebrows until Mr Howlett meandered in with Bucky and Clint Barton on his tail, each of them pushing a cart of dodgeballs.

"We'll be playing dodgeball today," Mr Howlett said, with a resignation that recognised this was the only game the majority of his class were capable of playing, even if they were unwilling. "Mister Barnes, Mister Barton, each of you pick your team. Take it in turns, and no favourites."

"What a stupid thing to say," Betty Ross, who was behind Steve as she was prone to be, muttered under her breath, but for once Steve was confident about not being picked last. Bucky had promised to choose him for volleyball, so why not dodgeball? Surely they were the same thing, if not the same principle.

Bucky chose first. "Natasha," he said, which was brave; Clint looked very much like he wanted to kill him. Natasha, with a quick, almost-missed glance at Clint, walked confidently over beside Bucky and grabbed a dodgeball, cocking it on her hip.

Clint turned to regard the group. "Rumlow," he said, because although Rumlow was an asshole, he was a fit asshole, and Clint may or may not have wanted to pummel Bucky's team into the ground. He wasn't above doing whatever he had to in order to achieve that.

"Rhodes," Bucky said, in a surprising turn of fate. Mr Howlett raised his eyebrows. "He's fast," Bucky said in defence of his actions, but nobody replied, least of all Rhodey.

"Schmidt," Clint said.

"Cage."

"Grimm."

"Storm."

"Which one?"

"Susan."

" _Why_?"

"Miss Romanoff," Mr Howlett chastised her, as a red-faced Susan Storm, already chewing her hair, joined the line-up on Barnes' team. Natasha ignored him and leaned in to Bucky, whispering harshly in his ear. It must've been something quite threatening indeed, because Bucky, who no one had ever seen the slightest bit nervous, began sweating spontaneously, tugging at the loose collar of his polo-shirt.

"Johnny," Clint said, snatching up the other Storm twin, who was rumoured to spend recess smoking cigarettes out the back of the school.

"Danvers," Bucky said.

"Jones."

"Lewis."

"Murdock."

"Wilson." (Natasha slapped her hand to her face in despair.)

"Ross."

"Richards."

It was down to Tony and Steve. Steve, who had up until five minutes ago actually liked the thought of games, had a weight like lead in his stomach. His throat felt so tight he worried it was asthma, but a puff of his inhaler did not resolve it, so it must've been something else. Not that he'd let himself think Bucky would actually let him be on his team, that he'd actually choose him first; that would've been ridiculous, completely. Utterly ridiculous. He didn't know why he'd ...

"Stark," Clint decided, and Tony trudged up to join perhaps the most foreboding dodgeball team one had ever encountered. Mr Howlett clapped his hands once and moved to the front of the hall.

"Rogers, you're on Barnes' team by default," he said. "Join the team. Hurry up, do I look like I'm young enough to wait for you shuffling up here? Come on, Rogers."

Steve shuffled a little quicker across the newly buffed floors, almost falling on his ass a couple times as he went. By the time he reached the line-up his ears were so hot he was surprised they hadn't singed his blond hair, and he was desperately aware of the way in which everyone on his team was disappointed at his presence. He attempted, to no avail, to make eye contact with Bucky Barnes (who had since resumed first name-surname status in his mind, where Steve placed all of his disappointments), but the older boy was resolutely avoiding Steve's gaze. Indeed, Barnes seemed rather uncomfortable, constantly pulling at the collar of his shirt though there was no restriction in the fabric whatsoever.

As Mr. Howlett began to lay down the ground rules - the majority of which prohibited intentional violence and hurt, and were therefore unpopular with Clint Barton and Rumlow in particular - Steve noticed, for perhaps the first time, how Barnes' fingernails were bitten almost down to the bed, and how his skin was red as if constantly chewed. It was such a shock to his system that Steve almost had to sit down, but he was prevented by the beginning of the game.

For the next half an hour (half an hour was now the longest form of time measurement Steve could think of) Steve was so preoccupied with avoiding being hit that he almost forgot Bucky Barnes existed. It was one of his main talents to be able to take a punch and get back up again, but he was also pretty adept at avoiding them in the first place, at least if he could help it. He almost expected Mr. Howlett to praise him when he was one of the final two standing on Barnes' team, along with the team captain himself, but instead the teacher just seemed disappointed that he hadn't seen a small blond boy be pummelled to the ground to brighten up his afternoon.

Barnes and Rogers versus Schmidt, Barton, Pierce and Rumlow. The odds seemed impossible, and Barnes' underdog strategy, although noted as noble by their teacher, was as stupid as you could get in middle school dodgeball. There was no way in hell they were going to win, though between them, they did have the master of dodging (Steve) and the master of throwing balls (Bucky).

(Perhaps if it had been three years later and their friendship had already been established, Steve and Bucky would've known each other well enough to play to their individual strengths and win. However, they had only just met, and Steve was more concerned with being angry at him and more embarrassed than he knew what to do with than actually playing games.)

They lost, rather pathetically, within ten seconds of Mr. Howlett blowing the whistle. They were only granted that length of time because Rumlow accidentally dropped a ball and had to stop to pick it up again. It wouldn't have counted as the most ridiculous moment of Steve's existence - it would have a lot of moments to compete against, especially as he was considered Leavenworth Elementary's laughing stock for the better half of seven years - but it was pretty damn close.

Plus, the look of defeat on Barnes' face might've just made Steve think for a moment about being annoyed at him. Just a moment, and then it passed.

"I think we did pretty well," Barton mused out-loud as the boys trudged back to the changing rooms, the girls having scarpered the opposite way. "Don't you think, Barnes?"

Barnes would've been within his right to swear at Clint, or push him into the wall, or even gripe back a little bit, especially considering everyone knew how long Clint would keep pushing him until he did. But he did nothing of the sort.

Barnes gave a little chuckle and grabbed Clint in a half-hearted hug. "Good game," he said to him, before walking off to call the first shower.

The size of Clint's eyes reflected his - and most everyone else's - shock.

Steve, having been the bullied for a long time, recognised immediately why Barnes was the most popular guy in school; he didn't let anything bother him, or if he did, nobody ever saw it. Like Tony, he was careful about who he divulged his weaknesses to, if anyone. Unlike Tony, he was subtle about it. Steve doubted anyone had even considered his habit of nail-biting to be anything but a pastime before he did.

"All I'm saying is that if you spread your legs a little bit, you could get more gravitational pull on the ball and the arch would've been greater."

"You don't know shit about physics, Richards. Gravitational pull? You're talking out your ass."

"I'll have you know I was first in physics in elementary school!"

"You're a goddamn liar!"

"No I'm not!"

"Yes you are! I was first in physics!"

"Who told you that?"

"Ms. Grey! She read my reports from school and said it was very clear I was the best pupil."

Reed Richards paused. He was in the middle of getting changed, and his stark white belly stood out against the pale blue paint on the changing room walls.

"She told me the same thing," he muttered. Tony, who had been too busy mumbling something to Sam Wilson, who wasn't really listening, looked up.

"What?" Tony said.

"I said," Reed Richards repeated, "she told me the same thing."

Tony stopped, his fancy polo shirt with the horse logo on it half folded in his hands. He blinked a couple of times fast, then dropped his shirt onto the bench and began scratching furiously at his palm. Reed and Steve looked at Tony's hands, then met each other's eye, and promptly ignored it, returning to their own clothes and their own shoes and their own problems.

"All I'm saying," Tony said, a few moments later. His voice was thin like it tended to be when he knew people had seen him. "Is that you don't know what you're talking about. I'm the best at physics, so there."

Reed looked up again from his bag, his lips parted for a fight, but when he met Tony's eyes and saw what Steve regularly saw but never mentioned, he closed his mouth.

"Alright," Reed said. Tony did a double take. "No, you're right. You do know more about physics than me. I shouldn't have brought gravity into it."

"Damn right you shouldn't have," Tony said, once he had recovered from the shock. He turned to Steve. He hadn't noticed the blood from his hand had transferred onto his white shirt. "What do you think, Steve?"

"Hm?" Steve said. He looked up as if he hadn't been listening. "I think you should go with the navy shirt. The white one kinda makes you look like an Asbestos man."

Tony raised his eyebrow in confusion, considering the shirts he had, one in each hand. "You think?" he said. He still hadn't noticed the blood. Steve nodded once, curtly.

"Definitely," he said. "Not that I'm any expert or anything, but..."

"No, no, you're right," Tony said. "I don't want to look like an ... Abetos man. Thanks, Steve."

"No problem, pal," he replied. He grabbed his kit, packed neatly into a rather shabby Adidas bag, and smiled weakly at his friends. "I'll see you later, then?"

"Sure," Tony said absentmindedly. His voice was muffled by the navy shirt currently over his head. "Call me if you need help on that algebra, 'kay? Don't call Richards."

"Why would I? He's only second best."

The look of rage on Reed's face and the pure delight on Tony's was more than enough to get Steve through the bus ride home. With a chuckle he made his way out of the changing room, down through the halls that he barely knew and out into the cool September air.

As he walked towards the bus stop, he was intercepted by Rumlow and Schmidt, both still in their games kit and without Pierce to guide them.

Steve was going to miss the bus.

He tried to step past them, but they moved closer together; an impenetrable brick wall, and both about as bright as one put together. Steve would've said that out loud, but as much as his mother questioned him, he didn't have a death wish.

"Come on, guys," he said to them. "I just wanna get home."

"Home to your mammy, right?" Rumlow said. His tone was high and childish; mocking. Steve felt his blood beginning to boil.

"Yeah," he said. "Move outta the way."

"Whatcha gonna do about it?" Schmidt asked. "You gonna go crying to Mr. Xavier that the big bad boys were hurting little Stevie Rogers again?"

A muscle in Steve's jaw jumped. "I didn't go runnin' to Mr. Xavier," he protested. "I was sent to him 'cause I bust my nose. I didn't tell him nothing, you know I didn't."

"Yeah, you never tell anyone nuthin', do you, Rogers?" Rumlow teased. "Well, you don't tell no one _important_ , is what I'm saying. You probably tell your mama all about everythin,' and she doesn't do a damn thing about it, 'cause she can't."

Steve had never told his Ma anything about Rumlow, Schmidt and Pierce. He'd never uttered the word 'bully' or 'punch' to her, worried more than anything about worrying her. For years he'd kept it to himself or the school guidance counsellor, though even then he managed a couple of words before his instincts made him shut up like a clam. He knew better than to tell people; everyone always said it got better if you did, but from what Steve had seen, things only got worse when you got on Pierce's bad side. He was smart enough to make your life hell while looking like a friend.

He was about to tell them this, to fight against their accusations, when someone else walked up. A familiar face, if not one he knew particularly well, emerged from the school building and hurriedly made their way over to the group.

Bucky Barnes was the last thing Steve needed right now. For a gut-wrenching moment, Steve thought Barnes might've went over to Schmidt and Rumlow and stood beside them, but instead he made his second stupid decision that day. He placed himself in between the two parties, but slightly more inclined towards Steve, making it perfectly clear whose side he was on. His hair was wet from the shower and slicked back on his head, and he was so clean that his white clothes appeared grotty in comparison. The sight only made Schmidt and Rumlow, both sweaty from their workout and pissed about missing out on a shower, infinitely angrier.

"What's going on?" Bucky asked. Steve glared at him, hoping that the message to get away was conveyed through his eyes. Bucky met his gaze and didn't drop it. Steve was the first to look away.

The message was obviously not received.

"Are you picking on Steve?" Bucky asked.

"Bucky," Steve hissed. "What are you doing?"

"Aw no," Rumlow said, pretending to cry, his hand balled up into a fist like a baby's. "Does wittle Stevie need big boy Bucky to fight his battles?"

"No!" Steve yelped. "No, I don't. I don't even know why he's-"

"So it is a battle?" Bucky said, inclining his head to the side. Above them, a magpie screeched. Steve began to consider the likelihood of being dive-bombed by enough birds that he would die and not have to live in this moment at all.

"Bucky, leave it alone," Steve warned him.

"Lover's tiff?" Schmidt asked. His thin, dry lips were pulled into a tight smile. "Come on, Barnes. This is nothing to do with you."

"What's it to do with then?" Bucky asked. By his face, you could never tell that there was any kind of confrontation occurring. He was the epitome of calm; the face of the doctors Steve's Ma worked with, always confident in their own abilities, even when they were wrong.

"Nothing that concerns you," Schmidt said.

"Great," Bucky replied. "Then I can go?"

Everyone remained silent and stared at him. It was a novel occurrence; neither bully nor bullied was quite sure how to react.

Bucky began to walk towards the front gates. He stopped after a few steps and looked over his shoulder.

"You coming, Steve?"

Steve pointed at himself. Schmidt and Rumlow exchanged a glance. Bucky nodded, a laugh playing on his features.

"Yes, you," he said. "Remember, Mom's making casserole for dinner? She told your Ma she'd give you some 'til she gets back from the hospital."

"Oh," Steve said. He searched his brain for a memory of this event - perhaps he had confused the promise of being on Bucky's dodgeball team for this? - but then realised what it was that Bucky was trying to do. His eyebrows narrowed. "Right. Of course."

Anger filled Steve once more, not at Schmidt and Rumlow this time, but at Bucky. What made the other boy think that Steve needed him to fight his battles? Did he not seem like he was strong enough to deal with the two idiots without a convenient get-out clause? If Steve went with Bucky, the next day would only be worse when Bucky wasn't there. If Steve didn't go with Bucky, he'd probably get his recently set nose broken again, and his Ma would get worried about infection.

He made the executive decision against his better nature to follow the other boy. For the first time since he was ordered to pick teams a genuine smile crossed Bucky's face, and for a second the two boys walked in comfort with each other, their steps matching perfectly, their backs to the Sinister Duo.

Then Schmidt's voice echoed loud and clear across the playground.

"Tell your Ma you're a coward!"

All he could see was red. Before Bucky had a chance to grab his arm, Steve had whipped around, his fist making contact with Schmidt's face.

"Shit!"

Blood ran down Steve's knuckles. Schmidt's face looked like a Mondrian painting. Rumlow's mouth was an 'o.'

"You little shit!"

Rumlow swung for Steve and made contact with the side of his cheek. His knuckle caught on Steve's nose, and a searing pain rippled up Steve's head. He fell to the ground, and just as he saw Schmidt draw his leg back for a kick, Bucky Barnes grabbed Schmidt tightly by the shoulders, squared his neck and head-butt him.

A loud crack went through the playing field. Perhaps it was what alerted the teachers, or maybe some of the remaining students in the changing rooms had seen four young boys all sprawled, in varying states of infirmity, along the gravel. Either way, Mr. Xavier was as usual the first on the scene, and he rolled down the purpose built ramp from the school onto the pitch, a disappointed but not entirely shocked look on his face. Behind him the school nurse Claire Temple had arrived with her first aid kit and a groan.

"It's always you three," she said with almost affection as she picked Steve up from the ground, giving him the strength to sit up. "You've set that nose back at least a month, Mister."

"Nurse Temple?" Mr. Xavier said. Nurse Temple looked up to see Mr. Xavier pressing a hand to Bucky's neck. "I think this boy is unconscious."

"Yes, I figured that myself," she said. "As is that one." She was talking about Schmidt, who was a little more awake but was groaning quite ferociously as he grabbed his head and rocked. "Mister Rumlow seems fine, at least until his mother gets here."

Rumlow went positively grey. For all his teasing about Steve's Ma, he was awfully sensitive about his own.

"We're going to have to call your parents," Mr. Xavier said. Steve, a little dizzy and more than a little nauseous, pointed at himself. Mr. Xavier nodded. " _All_ of your parents," he clarified.

"That's not fair!" Rumlow protested. Nurse Temple rolled her eyes.

(If Steve looked very carefully, he could see her mouthing, 'Children,' under her breath.)

Steve wasn't sure how long they spent sitting on the itchy seats outside Headmaster Fury's office - his perception of time was never great as he drifted in and out of consciousness - but after Nurse Temple managed to get them checked over for concussion and deduced there was no danger, the wait became more tolerable. Schmidt and Rumlow were strategically placed at the other end of the line-up of chairs, whilst Bucky and Steve resided at the end closest to the office, which was undoubtedly the most dangerous place to be.

"'m sorry," Steve said. Beside him, Bucky winced as he flipped the ice-pack to the cooler side. He had a rather impressive purple bruise on his forehead.

"'s not your fault," Bucky replied. "They were bullying you."

"They weren't bullying me," Steve said. Bucky raised an eyebrow, then realised that was extremely painful and stopped.

"Sure looked like it."

"They weren't bullying me."

Bucky looked at him. Steve picked at the corners of his own ice-pack.

"They weren't bullying me."

"A little bit?"

A breath got caught in between Steve's throat and his chest, a little bubble of air.

"Yeah," he said eventually, sounding like he was about to cry but he wasn't. "A little bit. Maybe."

They fell into comfortable silence. Rumlow and Schmidt did not say a word to each other, or even look in the other's direction. For all their bonding as they beat Steve up, they did not seem to like each other very much, at least not when Pierce wasn't around.

"Sorry 'bout your bruise," Steve said finally. Bucky gave a weak little smile.

"It's okay," he said. "Bruises are cool. They always have a story behind them."

Steve looked at the billboard on the facing wall. There were a lot of leaflets about bullying. A lot about abuse and things too. He thought about taking one for Tony, but if someone saw him they might've thought his Ma was hurting him, so he didn't.

"Yours kinda looks like Australia," Steve told him. Bucky's eyes widened.

"No way!" he exclaimed. Schmidt and Rumlow looked up at the sudden excitement. "Really? Trace it for me; I wanna feel if it does."

He hesitated for only a moment before he conceded. Bucky's forehead was hot where Steve's fingertip moved, and as he traced the outline of the bruise he realised it looked nothing like Australia. Bucky closed his eyes - "To see better," he explained - and when Steve removed his touch, he opened them again.

They were grey or green or blue. Steve couldn't decide. They were mostly red, though. That was Steve's fault. Steve figured his eyes probably looked green instead of blue; that was the guilt.

"It totally felt like Australia," Bucky said. Steve couldn't understand how it did, but he smiled nonetheless. "That's so cool. I have an Australia bruise."

"There's a story behind it, too," Steve said. The leaflets said that bullying didn't have to be forever. He didn't really get that. "I mean, if you wanted to tell people. If they asked. Would you?"

"Would I what?"

"Tell them the story."

"Of this bruise?"

"Yes, dumbo, of that bruise."

Bucky burst into laughter, then winced. It was so funny that Steve laughed too.

"Course I will," Bucky replied when he'd recovered. "Head-butting Schmidt was so badass. Even Clint would think so. Do you think Clint would think so?"

"A little bit."

Bucky nudged him with his shoulder. The weight behind the nudge was nice and solid. It was comforting like his Ma. When Bucky moved back, Steve leaned a little to his left and rested against his body, very lightly at first, in case he didn't like it. Bucky stayed very still, so Steve relaxed more against him. Eventually, the tension removed itself from Bucky's muscles and they sat in companionable silence.

Headmaster Fury talked to them first, separate then together, when neither of them would give him any information. Of course, they didn't speak when they were together either, and eventually he had to concede and allow them to return to the seats outside in the corridor. That was where they sat until their mothers arrived, Winnie looking more than a little baffled and concerned and Sarah tired and in her scrubs.

"Oh Jimmy, darling," Winnie cooed, dropping down to her knees in front of her son. She grabbed his face in her hands more harshly than she probably intended, and pulled it this way and that as she examined the bruise.

"Does it look like Australia?" Bucky asked, breaking the tense silence. His words seemed almost to bring Winnie to tears, and she brought him into a tight hug, so suffocating Steve could hear his lungs struggling to operate.

Sarah, on the other hand, simply walked over to Steve and patted him once on the head.

"You alright, sweetheart?" she asked. Steve nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm okay."

"Your poor old nose," Sarah mumbled. "Third time this month, too. You're looking more like your daddy every day."

Steve's Ma always knew the things to say that would cheer him up. Headmaster Fury walked out of his office and greeted both women with a handshake.

"Please, come in," he said. Winnie and Sarah looked at each other and began to walk into the dragon's den.

"Have you ever been here before?" Steve heard Winnie anxiously ask.

"All the time," Sarah said. "I give Fury a Christmas card each year."

Bucky wrung his hands the entire time they were in, but when they emerged, all three of the adults were laughing, and Rumlow and Schmidt looked terrified.

"You can go on home with your mothers now, boys," Headmaster Fury said. "I think a lunchtime detention is sufficient for both of you, as you were only acting in self defence."

(As they walked out of the school Bucky leaned into Steve and mumbled, "Not so much self defence," to which Steve replied, "We got off with it, didn't we?" Bucky laughed so hard some snot came out, but Steve smiled more than he had for weeks.)

In the car park, Sarah patted Steve's head again and sighed.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," she said, "but I have to go back to work after this, so I'll leave you in with old Annie, okay?"

"But Ma!" Steve protested. In a lower voice, he argued, "She smells, Ma."

Sarah pursed her lips into a scowl. "You don't say that," she said. "Annie is a wonderful woman who cares so much about you. She's a real friend. She might be too busy to make you dinner but I'm sure she'll get you some biscuits, she won't let you starve."

"Sorry to interrupt," Winnie Barnes said. At her back, Bucky had a hand on her shoulder, almost pushing her forward. Steve grinned at him. "I've got a casserole in the oven as we speak, and my second daughter is going out tonight so we have spare. I don't mean to intrude, but I just thought-"

"That would be great!" Steve interrupted. Sarah shot him a glare. "I mean," he said. "If that would be okay with you, Mrs Barnes."

"Wouldn't have suggested it if it wasn't, sweetie," Winnie said, "and please, call me Winnie. Mrs Barnes is my mother in law."

For the second time in as many days, Steve found himself crossing the threshold of the Barnes' family home, eating their food, watching their TV and playing games with Bucky and his sisters. It was something he hadn't dared to let himself imagine, especially given his disappointment that day, but the more time he spent with Bucky, the more time he wanted to spend. It was a very, very bad thing.

Around eight o'clock, after the last showing of Spongebob, Bucky and Steve thundered up the stairs to Bucky's bedroom and flung themselves back on his bed, which creaked rather ominously and caused both boys to burst into fits of laughter.

"You have so many channels on your TV," Steve said.

"We just have all the normal channels," Bucky replied. He threw a tennis ball up and down as he lay on his back. He did it because he'd seen it in a movie his sisters always watched. "Why, what do you have?"

"We just have the one," Steve said, "and the VHS player. Ma gets lots of tapes from the charity stores."

"That's so weird," Bucky said. Steve went quiet. "A good weird," he amended hurriedly. "Like in a 'oh we're so different that's why we'll be good friends' kinda weird. That weird."

"You didn't pick me for the dodgeball team."

The tennis ball missed Bucky's hand and hit him in the face, but Steve was too busy beating himself up for opening his mouth to even laugh. The lump in Bucky's throat - what Sarah called an Adam's apple - jolted a little bit.

"I didn't think you'd want to be on my team," he said. "You never like games."

Rather defensively, Steve asked, "How do you know?"

"'Cause you never pick up the ball and throw it, you just run away. Have ever since we were kids."

"Didn't think anyone noticed."

"I'm team captain. Kinda my job to notice."

"Yeah."

The tennis ball rested on the sheets between them. Steve's fingers danced around it, considered it briefly, then recognised all the embarrassing things that could go wrong and decided against it. It wasn't a particularly difficult decision to make; he made the same one in every single gym session he'd had since birth.

"Not everyone's good at sport though," Bucky said. "Just 'cause I like it, doesn't mean everyone does."

"I'm not really good at anything," Steve admitted.

"That's not true. You're good at fighting."

Steve turned his head to look at him. He pointed at his bruised cheek.

"You know what I mean though," Bucky said. "You're better at fighting than me. I betcha you've never knocked yourself out head-butting someone before."

"You just got your angle a little wrong," Steve explained. "It's easy done. Head-butting always hurts, but it shouldn't knock you out."

"Hm." Bucky bit on his lip. There were little red lines on his bottom lip where he'd bitten into it. "Think you could teach me?"

"How to head-butt?"

"Why not? Never thought I'd need to know, but now I do."

"Why?"

"If we're gonna be friends, I'm gonna have to head-butt Schmidt a whole bunch of times, ain't I?"

There were times when Steve had resented Bucky Barnes; for being so perfect, for having all the girls in elementary school crushing on him, for having all the boys jealous of him, for being so smart, for being so pretty, for being so sporty. There were also times when Steve rejoiced at Bucky Barnes, and this was the first; when he looked at the older boy and thought how great he was, how his popularity was not an inch undeserved, how he was the best person Steve knew.

The only thing Steve felt sorry about for Bucky was that he would never get to experience what it was like to be friends with himself; Bucky would never know the thrill that came when Steve saw him smile, or the aching when Steve knew he'd been the one to cause it. Bucky was ... He was amazing, and he had defended Steve for no reason, and- and...

(Two glasses of milk and a plate of cookies in her hand, Winnie Barnes trudged up the stairs to her eldest child's room, fully prepared to find two boys on the verge of sleep and wake. Instead, in the tiny gap of the ajar door, she saw something very similar to Bucky head-butting Steve, and Steve _thanking him_ for it ... and she decided she would just leave the plate outside the door with a little note, reminded all too vividly of herself and a young boy laughing just in the same way twenty years ago, two years before she would fall in love.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off: I am so, so sorry. I am currently in the middle of exams, applying to uni and there's a new potential relationship developing for me. I have barely enough time to eat and sleep, but hopefully in a couple weeks things will have calmed down enough that I can get more chapters out. Also, thank you so much to those of you who reached out and checked I was okay; it means so much to have your support, but even more to know that there are people out there who I don't even know who care about me, so thank you.  
> Secondly: keep your eyes peeled on the series in the next couple of weeks, because a new fic will soon be added to it. I'm not saying much more except for that it's from the perspective of our favourite grumpy Harvard boy, and it has made my best friend, the ultimate Bucky fangirl, very happy.
> 
> Thanks again for all the support, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

Barton was the biggest liar in school, but it was only because his brother did drugs at the weekend, or at least so Bucky said, and Bucky was usually right. In class - mostly physics because nobody but Tony and Reed Richards understood physics - Barton made it his personal mission to swear as much as possible and see how long it took Ms. Grey to look as if she was about to murder him. When the class were told to be quiet and go on working on their questions, Barton turned around in his seat to talk vividly to Bucky, his hands flapping all around his general vicinity.

Natasha Romanoff was not amused. It was clear from the furrow of her eyebrows and how her attention was almost singlehandedly on the pen in her hand instead of on Barton. Bucky was good at pretending he liked people and that he thought whatever they had to say was important. It was why Steve found it almost impossible to believe that Bucky actually wanted him as friend; Bucky was just the kind of person who everyone thought they were closer to than they actually were. His personality burst out of him like a drum, and anyone who was nearby couldn't be immune to his charm.

"So I was trying to find Mom the other night, but she was down in the kitchen and I'd searched all of the other rooms first, so by the time I finally found her the contact was already stuck in the back of my eye..."

Barton was lying for two reasons. One, he said - and maintained, which was almost worse - that he lived in a big mansion like the Starks, even though when anyone asked of its location or questioned why he didn't throw a party there he went suspiciously red and silent, two things that were very uncharacteristic of him. Two, he said that his contacts, which he had been experimenting with to change his eye colour rather than any corrective measure, got stuck behind his eye, which Steve knew was impossible because his Ma wore contacts and she told him so when he worried. So there.

"Ah, Clint's alright," Bucky said to Steve as they walked down the corridor to their next class; maths. Steve almost asked why he was walking with Steve when Natasha Romanoff was right there, but decided not to tempt fate. It was nice not having to walk alone or, even worse, walk as the third wheel to the Stark-Richards love fest. "You shoulda heard him when I told him what we did to Rumlow. He was fuming he didn't get to see it."

"Thought him and Rumlow were friends," Steve huffed, attempting to keep up with Bucky. Bucky walked with very long strides. It was a habit he had picked up from Natasha Romanoff, who almost ran everywhere and was early to every class, earlier than even the teachers. "He picked him for dodgeball."

Bucky turned to look at Steve, which gave Steve just enough time to catch up with him. Just.

"You really care a lot about teams, dontcha?"

Steve shrugged. "Just a little bit," he said. Bucky grinned at him, and was about to say something, when Natasha Romanoff stopped bang in the middle of the corridor and turned to the both of them with wide eyes.

"We're going to be late to class if you two drag on so much," she said. She was wearing a pair of designer jeans, kind of like Tony's, but they fit her even better than his did. Miss Frost, the English teacher who gave her opinion far too readily to be truly professional, had mumbled under her breath to another educator that her father must've been compensating for something.

"What does it matter?" Steve asked, though Bucky had already wiped the smile from his face and was beginning to walk even more quickly towards their destination. Miss Pryde was laid back for a teacher, and besides, they had another five minutes before the second bell went. "Your dad's the headmaster, anyway."

A strange thing came over Romanoff's face when he said that, something mixed between disgust and confusion. Steve could hear Bucky breath out even over the bustle of the corridors, and he wondered for a brief moment what he could've said that would warrant such a silence. After all, he had said nothing that wasn't true; Nick Fury had indeed adopted Natasha Romanoff, formerly known as Natalia Romanova, which she occasionally answered to but only when said by Clint or Bucky, and therefore he was indeed her father.

(Being eleven, such things were simple and linear in Steve's mind, who had never been orphaned nor adopted. A mother was a mother and a father was a father, and both of these figures were people who worked for you and provided you with food and a house, all things Fury did for Natasha, and it was no more complicated than that.)

"Hey, it's fine," Bucky said, moving from beside Steve back to his rightful place at Natasha's side. Natasha's shoulders lowered as he placed a hand on her waist. "We'll get there on time, you know? Steve just doesn't understand."

He did too understand, and he was about to say so when Bucky and Natasha began to walk once more, rather quickly. Steve followed suit, only because Tony and Reed were too far behind and he wasn't pathetic enough, or indeed confident enough, to walk alone. Bucky did occasionally turn his head as he walked to ensure Steve was still trailing along, and it made Steve's blood curdle in his veins.

They reached maths class with seven minutes to spare, and spent the entire time leaning against the wall outside the classroom as their classmates gradually trickled in, all of them looking at them with disdain for being the first to arrive. It was unbecoming of the most popular guy and girl in school to seem as if they cared so much, yet they managed to keep their control simply because no one was as smart, beautiful or talented as they were.

It was tragic. The whole of middle school was tragic, once Steve thought about it.

Steve sat beside Booger Wilson and Jane in maths class, and Betty Ross sat beside Jane. On the other side of the room, which had its desks arranged in a 'u' shape so that Miss Pryde could speak to all of the class at once, Tony sat between James Rhodes and Reed Richards, making equally stilted and awkward conversation with both of them, but staring at Reed the significantly more of the two, probably because Reed was Tony's best friend, even over Steve. Steve didn't mind though; he had Bucky to look at, right on the other side of the 'u'.

Bucky had a shiny nose, but no spots, which Steve felt simultaneously jealous and angry about. Sometimes his own spots would get so bad he'd sit on his bed and cry, but he always wiped the tears away before his Ma got home from work. Sometimes his Ma cried too, but never in front of him; he just knew because he heard her sniffing in bed at night. He'd asked her about it once, but she just told him that sometimes patients died and some patients hurt more than others.

Steve's Ma cared too much. That had always been her problem. That, and working too hard. Steve wished she'd be there to tuck him in just once instead of old Rosie, who smelled like wee and floral soap.

Jane was in a weird mood that day in maths. She barely talked to Steve, and when she did, it was to talk about Bucky Barnes, who had made her fall off a fence in elementary school just by talking to her.

"Did you see the way he looked at me?" she asked Steve. Steve frowned at his page.

"What? When?"

"Just there now."

Steve glanced up. Bucky had looked nowhere near Jane, but he did give Steve a little smile and go back to his equations.

"Same way he looks at everyone else," Steve answered. "What's 201 divided by 23?"

"This isn't the time for maths, Steve!"

"If you want to talk about Bucky Barnes, talk to Betty. I'm not failing math."

Betty was at the bathroom at that moment in time, so Jane felt comfortable enough to throw her pen down and go back to her normal, lower tone. For some reason when Jane found someone she wanted to be friends with she turned into a very polite, very quiet chipmunk; nothing like her usual self.

"That's not fair," Jane said with a pout. "Anytime I talk to Betty, she's just talking about you."

"Me? What? Why?"

Jane waved her hand dismissively. "Just that you're nice, and how you talk to her like an actual human being, and how your big blue eyes are just so cute..."

A weight settled in his stomach. "Stop it."

Jane obliged, her brown eyes wide. "Alright, I'm messing with you. But she does talk about you."

"Just not like that."

"A little like that."

Then Miss Pryde told them off for talking, Bucky Barnes smirked at Steve over the classroom, and Steve wasn't sure what to think.

After physics and maths there was history, then lunch. Leavenworth Middle and High School had a very handsome history teacher named Mr. Erik Lehnsherr, who cared about a lot of things, but mostly minorities. This went over the heads of most of the residents of the town, who were as paper white as their descendents before them.

"Mister Wilson," the history teacher declared one grey day. "Have you ever felt the oppressive weight of the white community bear down upon you?"

Booger Wilson looked up from his desk. He had been sleeping, and a piece of paper was stuck to his cheek. "Huh?" he stuttered, tired and not half listening. "I don't think so, sir?"

Mr. Lehnsherr's shoulders slumped, and for a moment the class felt sorry for him, a unanimous wave of sympathy, although it was such a strange thing to feel sorry for that they got over it almost immediately. Steve knew that Mr. Lehnsherr would go to the staff room immediately after this class and take a cup of tea from Mr. Xavier and complain to him about youths these days and how they didn't understand the struggle. Steve knew because he'd seen it before when the teachers sent him up to the staff room to get milk and biscuits, and he knew because no one really noticed he was there. Mr. Xavier only noticed once when Mr. Lehnsherr moved close to him - maybe to whisper something, maybe to pick up the sugar from the bench behind Mr. Xavier - and he rolled back so fast his wheelchair crashed into the dishwasher.

At lunch, Steve had got his tray of macaroni and cheese, his yogurt and his apple juice. He was making his way to the empty seat beside Jane when a chair leapt back so quickly it bashed into his legs.

"Ow," he said, trying his best to touch the place where a bruise was surely forming at the same time as balancing his tray. "Watch where you're going."

"Sorry, Steve," Bucky said, with that big wide smile that showed all his teeth. "You can sit with us today, if you wanted. Just - if you don't have anywhere else to go."

Steve frowned. He looked up at the table and saw the glares Clint and Natasha were directing Bucky's way. Bucky seemed oblivious to the rest of the table's shock and disappointment at his invitation.

"There isn't any more seats," Steve said. "I'll be fine."

"We can pull a seat over," Bucky said.

"I don't see a seat."

Bucky glanced around the canteen at that, his eyes catching on Booger Wilson. Steve's eyebrows drew together in confusion as Bucky stood up and walked with purpose a couple tables down. He couldn't see an empty seat at Booger's table; despite his nose picking tendencies, Wilson was a relatively likeable guy, and he fit right in with the chess club and the other kids who picked their nose as well and wiped it under the table.

Then it dawned on Steve what was about to happen, and he felt physically sick, because he knew how it felt to be Booger.

"Hey, Wilson," Bucky said, none of the smile on his face or the sweet tone that he used with his friends and the teachers. His grey eyes narrowed, and Steve was suddenly reminded of who this boy was, who he had been to him all through elementary school.

A bully.

Booger looked up from his lunch of sandwiches and pushed his glasses up. His shoulders were in his shoes. Booger Wilson's mom was the nurse in the surgery up Main Street, and the entire town called her Mama Wilson because they loved her so much. Steve's Ma said Mama Wilson was the smartest lady she'd ever met, and the best nurse you could ever hope to have, even including herself. Nobody loved Booger that much though; he didn't speak enough for anyone to love him.

"B-"

"Give me your seat."

Booger blinked a few times fast. His glasses were so thick his eyes were like saucers, or maybe it was just the tears in them. The rest of the canteen had gone silent as they watched Bucky glare down at the other boy, and the attention might've suited Bucky, but it made Booger fade into the plaster on the walls.

"But-"

"Come on," Bucky said, glancing back at his table, who were  the only ones still talking, like this was normal. "My friend needs a seat."

Booger's eyes met Steve's. Reluctantly, he stood up from his seat and began to pass it over to Bucky.

Steve made his way over, a muscle in his jaw working furiously. He set his hand on top of the chair, mere centimetres from Bucky's hand, and slammed it down on the ground with enough force to make a dent in the floor.

Bucky's confident persona had vanished once more, looking again like the boy Steve had played tic-tac-toe and Nintendo with, looking like the boy his sisters adored.

"Steve?"

"I don't like bullies," Steve said. He hoped his voice sounded stronger out loud than it did to his own ears. "Not even when they're bullying for me."

Bucky continued to gape at Steve. If it had been anyone else, Bucky would've started tearing them apart by now. Steve still remembered the time Reed Richards called Bucky a bully in third grade for stealing the football he'd got for his birthday, and Bucky replied with, "Sure, you can't play football for shit anyway, can you, Richards?"

Why Bucky wasn't hurting Steve - why he wasn't even _trying_ to - was beyond Steve, and it was beyond everyone else as well. Behind him, murmurs and whispers buzzed in the air, and Bucky must've heard them too, because his cheeks began to get blotchy. Attention had became poisonous to him where before it had been his strength, and it was all because of Steve.

He would be proud of himself if he wasn't so terrified. He'd taught Bucky how to headbutt properly; it had been a stupid thing to do, even if Bucky had never done more than push someone over on the playground or deck someone on the football field. Physical violence wasn't his thing, he was too smart for that; verbal manipulation was the Barnes speciality.

"I'm-" Bucky stopped and swallowed a couple times fast. Steve continued to stare him out, even though the eye contact was nearly burning through the back of his skull. "I'm not a bully, Rogers."

"What do you call taking a guy's seat, then?"

Tony and Reed stood up from their seats at the same time. They didn't even look at each other before walking towards Steve and grabbing an arm each, pushing him towards the exit. He didn't want to go. He wanted to stay and finish this. He wanted to knock the handsome right off Bucky's face.

But Tony's hands were spiky, and they were covered in blood, and Reed's were as well but not his own. They'd been holding hands under the table like they did sometimes when Reed wanted to stop Tony ripping his own skin off. Steve looked Tony in the eye, and there was something in there that made all of his defences come crashing down, and so he went with them.

As he walked towards the door, the rest of the hall burst into raucous conversation, laughing and conversing and wondering who the hell the blond kid was who called Bucky Barnes a bully. No one had ever stood up to him before, and Steve wasn't quite sure why. Clint was the one who would make your life a misery; Bucky would just ruin your day and your self esteem, he wouldn't actually hurt you.

At least, Steve didn't think he would.

The second the trio got out of the canteen, Tony pressed Steve up against the wall. In the background, Reed tapped his index finger insistently against his temple.

"What the fuck, Rogers?" Tony asked, grabbing onto his arms and patting them, as if searching for his motivations. "Do you have a fucking death wish? What the hell was that?"

"He was going to take Booger's seat," Steve said. Tony blinked.

"So?"

"So," Steve said, pushing Tony back off him. Tony went easily, without an ounce of fight, though he lost about five inches off his height. Steve didn't have it within him to apologise at that moment, not with Tony looking at him like he was some kind of idiot, though that was always how he looked at him, so why today was different was beyond him. "It wasn't right."

"But it's Booger," Reed piped up. Tony had gone awfully silent, and his hand was touching where Steve had pushed him. Steve hadn't even done it that hard; Tony bruised like a peach. "Why risk it for _Booger_?"

"Booger's a person too," Steve argued, but he knew it was a weak one. He sighed, scratching at the back of his ear. There was a little bit of eczema there that always flared up when he got righteous. "I mean, it wasn't fair. He had the seat first."

"Yeah, but Barnes has the school," Reed said. "He's got _Barton_. Our lives are going to be-"

"Wait, why ours?" Steve asked. "I was the one who did it. If he's going to fuck anyone over, it'll be me."

Tony and Reed looked at each other. They hadn't pulled him out to protect Steve; they had done it to protect themselves.

"Oh, fuck the both of you," Steve snapped. "I'm going back in there."

"Your funeral," Reed called out after him. (Steve noticed at the end of lunch how Reed and Tony did not re-enter the canteen. He also noticed how most eyes were on him for at least part of the break, and how he must've been roaring red the whole time.)

"That was a pretty cool thing you did," Betty Ross said in English later that day. Bucky Barnes had been quiet all day; he hadn't answered any questions in class, and his grey eyes were constantly fixed on the ground. Steve had spent more time looking at him that day than ever before.

"Not really." Steve shrugged. "Just don't like bullies."

Betty hummed, pushing her hair back behind her ears. Her hair was very thick and long, but it was shiny, and it seemed pretty soft. Steve kinda wanted to touch it, but didn't want to die of embarrassment trying.

"Me either," Betty said, and went back to Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, because Miss Frost loved torturing the children.

Steve walked into his living room at four o'clock that afternoon with an aching headache. He knew at some stage his head would stop hurting and a migraine would start; it came on him slowly and then all at once, like an earthquake, the tremors erupting through his skull and pounding at his thoughts.

His Ma was home, for once. She was lying on her armchair with a book of diseases open to the middle lying on her chest. She was still in her scrubs, and the various body liquids on them mingled with old stains on the fabric. She smelt of hospitals, clean like antiseptic wipes, dirty like death. Her hair was thinner than ever. Steve touched her head and went into the kitchen, dropping his bag on the floor with more care than usual. He didn't want to wake her; not when she could sleep.

He fixed his own dinner; a microwave meal that he probably burnt, but it was better than getting food poisoning. Several forkfuls in, he was interrupted by a knock on the door, which was strange, because he had all of two friends and neither of them cared enough to come by his house. He picked himself up and jumped to see out the peephole, not that it provided any clarity, because he was almost sure that through the glass he could see Bucky Barnes wringing his hands.

Steve paused for a moment, his hand on the door handle. Why would Bucky Barnes be at his house? How did he even know where Steve lived? Had his Ma told Winnie? Had he told Bucky at some stage in the conversation? It was hard to remember. Either way, he could tell his face would be sore by the end of the night.

He breathed in deeply, then opened the front door. He didn't say a word, and for a moment neither did Bucky, then the grey-eyed boy put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his black Converse.

"Uh," he said.

"Um." Steve rubbed his eyes, mostly out of tiredness, mostly out of confusion. "You're. Here."

"Yeah, a little bit," Bucky said, in his attempt at humour. Steve raised an eyebrow. Bucky sighed. "Sorry. I just - can I come in?"

Steve glanced over his shoulder at his sleeping Ma. "No," he said. Bucky's shoulders deflated. "But you can talk to me outside, if you want."

"Yeah?" Bucky nodded to himself. "Yeah, that would be - that would be great. Great, talking to you. I mean."

Steve stepped out of the house, closing the door softly behind him. He hoped his Ma wouldn't wake up while he was out here and worry. He hoped a lot of things about his Ma. He tried not to make her worry; she worried enough about her patients.

"Um."

"I'm here to-" Bucky stopped himself. His voice sounded like Steve's did in the canteen earlier that afternoon, like he was underwater and struggling for breath. "I wanted to- I want... Sorry."

There was a break, at least until Steve realised that was what Bucky had came to say.

"Sorry?"

"Sorry." Bucky stepped from foot to foot. Behind him, the sun had begun to go down. The winter day was ending, and pretty soon it'd get too dark for them to be outside. "Sorry. I mean- yeah."

"That it?" Steve asked. "'cause I got homework."

"Really?" Bucky said. They had the same classes; Bucky just finished his homework in school, within minutes. Steve had watched him bomb through maths questions, hoping he'd get some of them wrong. He didn't. The big fat 'A+' was on all of his papers, in every class. "I- I could help you with it, if you wanted."

Steve looked back at the house. "My Ma's sleeping," Steve said.

"We could go out," Bucky said. "We could go- to the diner? Or the bowling alley?"

"The bowling alley," Steve repeated. "To do homework?"

"They have tables."

"Yeah but- the _bowling_ alley."

For what wouldn't be the first time, Steve Rogers conceded to Bucky's request even though it made no sense, and even though it went against his better nature. He knew Bucky was a bully, that he was a mean guy, that he'd been picking on people since elementary school but knew that he could get away with it because he was smart and handsome and so nice when he wanted to be. But yet Steve couldn't find it within himself to say no, couldn't look at those grey eyes and shut the door in his face.

Maybe Steve wasn't so brave after all. Maybe he was only strong when someone was about to punch him, and was powerless when someone just wanted to be his friend.

He knew Jane would be there with her 'boyfriend.' The aforementioned boyfriend was about six foot tall and lived in the next town over, but his parents were divorced, so when he was staying with his dad for a while he was in Leavenworth. Jane had met him at a science convention, which was pretty nerdy, even for Steve. Still, she seemed happy enough, at least for Jane, who was rarely happy.

When he walked in with Bucky Barnes, a backpack over his shoulder and a somewhat bewildered expression on his face not serving to mask his inner confusion at all, he had expected Jane to see him, and he had expected her to nearly drop the bowling ball as she spotted him with Bucky fucking Barnes.

"Be cool," he mouthed to her from behind Bucky's back, and because she wasn't as much an idiot as Steve was, she listened to what was socially acceptable and went back to throwing the bowling balls with her boyfriend. To any outside observer, you would never imagine that Jane Foster and Steve Rogers were acquaintances, never mind each other's oldest friend.

Bucky didn't talk much as Steve pulled his books out and sat them on the table, frowning over the problems he'd never be able to solve if he had a hundred hours of tutelage. He sat down with the same easy confidence as he did on the school bus, but his throat was constantly working, and his eyes were unfocused. It was kind of disconcerting.

"Hey."

Bucky looked up. Steve crossed his eyes, and succeeded in pulling a laugh from the other boy.

"Sorry," Bucky said. "I'm not really- good, at this sort of thing."

"Math? Miss Pryde would disagree."

"No. The whole 'not being liked' thing."

Steve's grip on his pencil tightened. "What do you mean by that?" he asked casually.

"Well, you don't like me, do ya?" Bucky said, a sad little laugh punctuating his words. "You think I'm a- a not nice person. Or something like that."

The whole situation was surreal. Bucky Barnes was sitting in front of him, twiddling his thumbs in the middle of a bowling alley, mere hours after Steve had stood up in the middle of a crowded dining hall and called him out for bullying Booger Wilson.

Why were they in a bowling alley? Why was Steve forced to sit and see Jane flounder in the background, trying to be inconspicuous? Why was Steve forced to write a note and put it on his Ma's chest so when she woke up, she knew he was out with the most popular guy in school?

The most popular guy in school. Goddamnit, Bucky Barnes.

"I-"

"You-"

Thank God he was interrupted, because Steve had no idea where he was going with that. Both him and Bucky quickly shut their mouths and stared at each other.

"You go first," they both said at once. "No, you."

This was getting annoying.

"You're the one who brought me here," Steve said to Bucky, once they'd both stopped trying to speak at the same time. "You go first."

"Okay." Bucky glanced up at the scoreboard for Jane and her boyfriend's game, then down to the players. A vague notion of recognition crossed his face, but it disappeared before Steve could translate it further. "I just wanted to say- I mean, I need to tell you- I'm..."

"Spit it out."

"I'm not a complete dickhead, alright?"

Steve sat back further in his seat. Jane had just knocked down four pins. Steve wasn't sure enough of the rules to know if that was good or not.

"Like, I'm a nice guy. Is all I'm saying."

Steve didn't say anything. Bucky's throat continued to work furiously.

"I'm not a bully, like. I'm a good guy. I'm a good person."

"You're kinda a bully," Steve said. He was attempting to be soft, because for some reason unbeknownst to him, Bucky Barnes was taking his accusation of being a bully very, very seriously, and very, very personally. "You nearly threw a guy off his seat today."

"I did it for you, though," Bucky said. "I didn't do it for the fun of it, like Rumlow does."

"Why you do it doesn't make a difference," Steve said. "You were still bullying Booger."

"Booger?" Bucky repeated. Steve tilted his head. "People still call him that?"

"As far as I'm aware. Why?"

Bucky closed his eyes, and Steve watched as his chest deflated. "I made up that nickname in second grade. Fuck, I'm a bully, aren't I?"

Steve opened his mouth, and was interrupted once again, this time by a bowling ball that came flying towards him. His reflexes as usual were impeccable, meaning that he sat completely still and hoped this danger would also pass by without harming him, and he would've been in severe difficulty if Bucky hadn't basically lay down on his seat and used his foot to kick Steve's chair back, causing him to fall to the ground but saving his head from getting bashed in with a bowling ball.

He was a little dazed as he lay on the ground. He didn't think he'd hit his head, but near death experiences had a tendency to make someone feel a little woozy.

He heard Bucky's voice, could see the other boy above him. "You alright? Rogers, can you hear me?"

Steve put his thumb up, and saw how his own skin was fuzzy. That wasn't right. He blinked a few times fast, and saw Jane and her boyfriend come running up to them, Jane's hand over her mouth.

Bucky turned to Jane's boyfriend, who was far too tall for a thirteen year old, and would undoubtedly continue to grow. "What the fuck, mate?" he demanded. "You almost killed my pal here!"

"Pal?" Jane mouthed, bending down to help Steve up. He took her hand graciously, and rested against her body as the world came back into focus. "Pal?"

"Look, sorry man," the boyfriend said. Dan? Was Dan his name? "Must've got distracted, hope he's alright..."

"He coulda been dead! Did you see how goddamn close that ball came to his head? That's a fucking bowling ball, you asshole! How the hell does someone just _let go_ of a bowling ball and almost kill someone?"

Bucky was red in the face, and his jaw had become more of a square than usual. It was quite remarkable to see, and Steve was too sore to even be angry at Bucky defending his honour yet again. Jane, however, left her spot beside Steve with sudden fluency, and Steve fell back onto the ground when she left.

"Excuse me," she said. "It was actually me who threw the ball, so don't get angry at my boyfriend."

It didn't take a genius to know what had happened. Jane had been throwing the ball, flinging it behind her back as she had a tendency to do with heavy objects and her competitive spirit, and had let go because her hands had been sweaty at Bucky's presence. Bucky though, although intelligent, remained oblivious to Jane's crush and indeed to her existence.

"You _threw_ it?" Bucky repeated, turning around to her. The boyfriend skulked back, and when Steve opened his eyes again, he was gone, probably having vanished to the bathroom. What a dick Dan was. "So you actually tried to hit us? What the fuck, lady?"

"Lady?" Jane repeated. Steve slapped his hand against his forehead, not that either of them noticed. "I'm the same age as you, pal, so let's get it straight."

(Like Steve, Jane possessed a rather impressive hot temper, inherited from her mother and which reared its head in unsuitable times such as this.)

"Bucky," Steve mumbled, pushing himself up to the sitting position. God, the world was spinning, even more than usual. "Bucky, it's okay, it's Jane..."

"You're alright Steve, I'm handling it," Bucky said. "So you tried to hit my friend here, then? Why the hell would you even do that?"

Jane, who had been at least a foot away from Barnes at that point, quickly advanced towards him, putting herself so close that she was basically standing on top of him. Her nose was at his chin, but regardless, the venom in her eyes was enough that it could've crossed oceans.

"If you actually listened to someone else instead of yourself for a change, I would explain that I was _trying_ to get a strike, but my hands were sweaty, so the ball just _happened_ to fling backwards and almost hit Steve."

Bucky's defensiveness of Steve had all but evaporated since Jane became close enough to smell her breath. Jane's breath was always nice and fresh on account of her carrying floss and a tiny bottle of mouthwash in her bag at all times. Her grandpa had been a dentist; it was in the blood. Instead of anger, there was now a look on Bucky's face that Steve remembered all too well from the playgrounds of elementary school, the same look he had seen directed at Natasha not too long ago.

"Unbelievable," Steve muttered to himself, wishing more than anything that he was unconscious right then.

"Steve?" Bucky asked. Jane's frown had disappeared as well, and as her eyes scanned Bucky's face she saw the same thing Steve so clearly decoded; attraction. Apparently, Bucky had something for people who were both small and angry. Her face went the colour of Steve's shirt.

"Yeah, Steve," she said, taking a couple steps back, though she looked as if she very much didn't want to. "I know Steve. I've known Steve, I mean- he was my neighbour. Still is. My mom used to take him to school. I sit beside him in maths."

Bucky opened his mouth, as if he had known that all along. Steve almost screamed or laughed, but he couldn't find his voice.

"Ah, of course," he said. "You're the pretty brunette with the amazing eyes who sits next to Betty Ross, right?"

Jane giggled. She actually fucking _giggled._

"Uh, guys?" Steve said, rubbing his head, which had a little bump after all from the ground. He'd have to get his Ma to check it out. "I am still down here, you know."

Neither of them cared. Bucky had a small smile on his face, and Jane kept pushing her hair back, so much so it actually made her look a little demented.

"Here," Bucky said, a thought just oh-so-casually occurring to him, as it probably had a million times before with a million different people. "I heard the diner's bringing out a new Oreo milkshake. You want to go try it sometime?"

Jane began to nod, but then remembered the small detail that would prevent her. "Oh, I have a boyfriend," she said. "Big, tall guy? Was just here five minutes ago?"

"Wouldn't need to be as a date," Bucky said with a shrug. Jane still didn't look convinced. Bucky shrugged once more, then smiled at her. "Look, think about it, kay? I'm always up for a good time."

Bucky held his arm out for Steve to take, and Steve was pulled up off the ground with the most ease he ever had been in his life. Then they walked out of the bowling alley, and Steve pretended not to hear Jane squealing as they went.

"You're unbelievable," Steve said to Bucky, wincing at his head. Bucky looked at him with a smirk.

"What, Stevie?" he said. He touched his hand to the forming bruise as well, but it didn't hurt as much because his fingers were like blocks of ice. "She seems like a nice gal. I can find you one anytime you want, just say the word. After all, I have a lot of bad karma built up over the years."

Unbe-fucking-lievable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da! As per usual, thank you so much for your support and comments, and please, please keep them coming in. The more comments I receive the more motivation I have to write, and I really need that, especially as I wait on uni applications coming in and work more and more. Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, thank you to everyone for support, and I really hope you love this chapter.
> 
> I'm putting a note at the start of this chapter because this is a particularly sensitive one. It deals a lot with Tony's family life, and just because it is written from a kid's perspective doesn't mean it isn't serious. I just wanted to leave a little disclaimer here that if that is triggering for you, maybe it's better you give this chapter a miss, or read with caution.
> 
> Thank you again for your comments and kudos, and keep them coming!

"So then Steve walks in with Bucky _fucking_ Barnes-"

"No fucking way. No _fucking way."_

"Yes fucking way! They're walking together laughing and everything, and I turn to Daniel and I was like, 'That's Bucky fucking Barnes,' and he just looked at me all stupid and said, 'Who's Bucky Barnes? And what kinda name is Bucky anyway?'"

Tony leaned back in his seat, scrunching his nose up so far his glasses moved up to his forehead. "What an amateur," he muttered.

"He doesn't know who Bucky is?" Betty asked, basically throwing herself across the table, though she had been doing that ever since Steve sat down, so she probably had heard the story over the phone from Jane the night before anyway. "Is he even from here?"

"I told you," Jane said. "He's from the next town over."

"Even still," James Rhodes said, picking at a piece of bread stuck in his braces. He had got them earlier than anyone, and because of this fact he was the only one there to suffer the teasing. Nevertheless, Steve didn't think they looked too bad. "Bucky's bound to know someone from the next town. Sure he plays on the football team."

"Daniel doesn't," Jane mused, "so he wouldn't know him."

"But _still,"_ Tony said. He had a smoothie for lunch that day - his mother was determined to get him to join her on a 'deep cleanse,' whatever that was - and it was a rather peculiar shade of green. "Bucky fucking Barnes, like."

Tony said 'like' a lot when he was talking about things that hit a little close to home. Bucky Barnes was very close to home; Steve didn't hear from Tony, because he never heard anything from Tony, but Reed had mentioned something about Bucky making fun of the cuts on his hands in second grade, and since then, Tony hadn't been able to stop shoving his hands into his pockets anytime some of the popular kids walked past.

Following the previous night, Steve doubted Bucky even remembered what he had said to Tony. The sad thing was, Bucky would probably be mortified to realise that it still affected him to that extent even now.

Look at him. One save from getting hit in the head with a bowling ball and he was justifying the actions of one of the biggest assholes in school.

He wasn't the only one, though. Jane, who had never been completely critical of Bucky due to his "amazing eyes" and the fact that "he always looks so _cool_ " was more than interested in how many times Steve had been in the Barnes house, and she demanded every detail. Steve felt weird telling her all about it; it felt like it was a secret, something special between him and Bucky, even though realistically Bucky had probably told Natasha Romanoff and Barton. They'd probably even laughed about it.

Or maybe not.

Steve glanced over the canteen and found an empty seat where Barnes should've been. (There was an unspoken rule that no matter what, you never took a seat from that table, even if every single one of the cool kids were off. It was basically suicide.)

"Can we talk about something other than Bucky Barnes, please?" he asked. Nobody - nobody but Betty Ross, who smiled sympathetically at him across the table - acknowledged his request. Steve sighed and finished off his apple juice. "He's not even in today."

"He's not?" Tony squawked. His chair became basically horizontal as he scoped out the situation. Finally, he returned to being upright and the whole table watched him carefully as he gave his verdict.

"Bucky Barnes isn't in," he said.

"I literally just said that," Steve said, but his voice couldn't be heard by anyone, not even Betty, over the sudden burst of conversation that spread throughout the hall.

In Leavenworth, it was well known that girls wore low top white Converse with dresses, jeans, skirts, everything, and boys wore high top black Converse. No one spoke of it, but it was a universal rule, at least until that day.

Steve wasn't sure if he intended it to be a dramatic entrance. He didn't think Bucky Barnes cared enough to think about how cool he looked, and that's what made him cool. Still, when the doors opened and everyone turned to see who was coming in late for lunch, a collective gasp rang through the canteen.

"Oh my God," Tony whispered behind Steve. He had got a phone for his birthday - a really expensive one, one of those flip phones with the camera - and he burst it out of his pocket, using Steve's head as a shield so he could get a picture.

Bucky Barnes had showed up in black jeans, a denim jacket, and white, low top Converse. Everyone glanced around at each other and began muttering incoherently as Bucky dropped into the empty seat at his table, but not before he moved it closer to Natasha, who looked him up and down.

"Got mud on my other shoes," he told her (Steve was pretty good at lip-reading, as throughout elementary school much of what was said was said about him, and he was nosy about that sort of thing). "Mary's got big feet."

Mary was his sister. Bucky was wearing his sister's shoes, and not a damn person was saying a thing to him, though everyone was speaking about him. There was no indication of this on his face, no high red spots or pink ears, and Steve hated him, but he also really wanted to be him. He really wanted to be the person who sat beside Bucky Barnes and told him how cool he was, instead of just staring at him across the canteen.

Because no matter how much of a dick Bucky was to everyone, nobody seemed to hate him. Nobody even disliked him, not really, not even Tony. He was inherently likeable, and he rode through life knowing that fact.

As his friends - the term used in the loosest way possible - began another conversation about Bucky fucking Barnes, Steve pulled a notebook out of his bag and began absentmindedly sketching. However, no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't stop drawing something that looked like a boy, in a denim jacket, wearing white Converse.

The next day, Steve and his friends were sat at the exact same table after three periods of maths and two of English. It had been a long day, and everything was topsy-turvy, because suddenly, boys were wearing white Converse and girls were wearing black, and everything was messed up.

"Betty, no," Steve said the second he saw her that morning. She was wearing a very nice floral dress and a pair of high top black Converse, and when Steve spoke she went very red indeed.

"Sorry, Steve," she said, patting his arm lightly like she was his mother, in a way she tended to do when she got embarrassed by whatever it was that embarrassed her. "I don't make the rules."

Bucky Barnes made the rules. Sitting in the middle of the canteen, it was clear to see that the Converse rule had switched on its head almost overnight. When Bucky walked into the hall for lunch and sat in his seat, Clint Barton, wearing a new denim jacket, scowled at him and said, "Fuck you, buddy."

Bucky just smiled. That great smile, the one with all his teeth. When he turned his head, Steve caught his eye, and he was so embarrassed he almost headbutted Tony in an effort to pretend he wasn't looking in Bucky's direction at all, even if he was.

On the way to French class with Dr. Doom - a rather large, foreboding educator who the girls got slightly giggly around on the basis of his strong jawline - Steve was intercepted by none other than Natasha Romanoff.

"Hey," she said. Steve's eyes moved from side to side as he surveyed the area. As far as he could tell, there was no Clint or Bucky in the general vicinity to egg her along, and Natasha would never make fun of him for Rumlow, Schmidt and Pierce because she hated them even more than she hated school.

"Uh ... Hey?"

"You went bowling with James yesterday, didn't you?"

James. Who the fuck was James?

Natasha Romanoff continued to look at him. Finally she sighed. "Bucky," she said.

Oh yes. James Buchanan Barnes. He didn't look like a James; there were too many Jameses in the school, and there were not enough Buckys.

Steve did not just think that.

"Uh, yeah?"

"Do you always answer with a question?"

"Uh-"

"Nevermind." Natasha Romanoff shook her head. Her hair was long and straight and cut very bluntly at the bottom, so it was kind of like a big ginger bowl had been placed on top of her head. If Steve were to say so, it would hurt her feelings, so he didn't (Natasha Romanoff would also hurt him, and that wasn't nothing). "You don't have to look so scared, you know. I'm not going to bite you."

Steve wasn't consciously looking scared. He tried to consciously look _un-_ scared, but couldn't quite manage it. Natasha Romanoff considered him with something that bordered on amusement or boredom, a mix she was the first to perfect.

"Look, I'm sorry for pushing you off the jungle gym."

She said it like it was a chore, like Steve had begged her to apologise. Steve raised an eyebrow, about to reject her apology, but the curiosity as to why she was even talking to him in the first place stopped him, just for a second.

Natasha Romanoff ran her hand through her hair, puffing it up at the top. She had figured out that when she did that, all the boys in the general area stopped their conversations and watched her before continuing. Natasha Romanoff liked doing that; getting attention. Made sense that she was friends with Bucky.

"If you're going to be hanging out with Bucky, we need to hang out too," she said.

"Uh." Steve was so hopelessly, desperately confused. "I'm not - me and Bucky aren't-"

"You went bowling, yeah?"

"Well, um, that's the thing-"

"And you've been round at his house, yeah?"

"A couple times, but-"

"A couple times!" Natasha Romanoff let out a low whistle. She had walked so quickly that they arrived outside French with seven minutes to spare. Steve's legs were burning, and they felt kinda tight too. He wondered if you felt a stroke in your legs. He should ask his Ma. "Wow, Rogers, you two really are friends."

"I wouldn't say friends, really," he said. Was that what she was looking for? Was she doing reconnaissance, trying to see if Steve was a creepy stalker so she could make fun of him for loving Bucky Barnes as much as anyone did? Because that was messed up. "He just helped me after I got a sore nose."

"Several times."

"Yeah." Steve snorted a laugh. "Thanks to you."

He hadn't meant to say that out loud, but he was kinda glad that he did. Natasha Romanoff was too; he could see a change in her eyes, and her shoulders suddenly got higher.

"There it is," she said with a grin. She looked like a Cheshire cat. She was truly terrifying. "That's why he's hanging out with you."

"Wait - what?"

"We need to hang out," she said. "Not as a date or anything, that would be weird. Plus you're like - you're you, and I'm me, yeah?"

He got what she meant. It still stung a little though.

"But as friends," she said. "Girls and boys can be friends."

It didn't sound like a question, but evidently it was one, because she went quiet until Steve nodded and said, "Yeah, of course. I'm friends with Jane."

"Exactly," Natasha Romanoff said.

Steve almost brought up the fact that she was friends with Bucky, but he saw the way she looked at him, and the way he looked at her, and so he wasn't so sure of that himself.

"I'll drop by your place tonight then," she said. It was another not-question, and this time Steve was right. He was getting better at Natasha Romanoff.

Dr. Doom appeared silently at the door and pushed it open before returning to the shadows of his classroom. He never opened the curtains, and he did not speak to students when he could help it, and he listened to opera music that blasted from the CD player at break. Sometimes Steve could hear it in the detention room, when he had detention. He hadn't got it as much this year, but it was only the beginning of November.

"How do you know where I live?" Steve asked Natasha. She sat on the other side of the class, with Clint who usually snored in French class, and Bucky, who was off getting an award for academic achievement in elementary school that afternoon.

Natasha Romanoff shrugged. "I don't," she said. "I can just check Dad's files. No biggie."

It was kinda a biggie. Steve was pretty sure looking at the Headmaster's files, even if you were his daughter, and particularly looking at individual files was illegal, if not highly frowned upon. Plus, Natasha Romanoff would see all the times he'd gone to the guidance counsellor and all the times he had been punched and all the times he had sat with a bloody nose in the school nurse's office, and that was too much ammunition for her to bear.

Nonetheless, Steve didn't have the chance to convince her otherwise before Dr. Doom started talking, and he couldn't work up the nerve to call out her name after class and get her to come back and talk to him, so whatever she saw she saw. No matter what he said she would've done what she wanted anyway; in fact, she might even have done it more, simply because she knew it annoyed him.

"So Natasha Romanoff is coming to your house tonight?" Tony said. His nanny picked him up from school, and every now and again after they had gym she would offer to bring Steve home, probably because she took one look at his knobbly knees in shorts and felt so bad about him she had to.

Steve sat in the leather seat in the back of the Audi and shrugged. Tony was in the passenger seat, because he had just gotten tall enough for it and he liked being able to sit in the passenger seat. It made him feel and look like a grown up. Steve didn't mind the back seat; it meant he couldn't see the road as easily, or witness Tony's nanny's poor driving.

"You're getting to hang out with all the cool kids," Tony said. "It's not fair."

"I don't know why I am, though," Steve said. "I betcha they have something planned for me. Like a dark sacrifice ritual or something."

"No talk about dark sacrifice rituals in the car," Tony's nanny said.

"I'll talk about what I want to, and so will my friends," Tony retorted back. For some reason, the nanny didn't say another word the whole way home, even though Steve and Tony went on to talk about devils and those boards that summoned ghosts that they couldn't remember the names of.

"Wee-ja," Tony said. "They're wee-ja boards."

"That doesn't sound very scary," Steve said. "Who would be scared of a wee-ja?"

"You'd be surprised," Tony said. "Big-ja is even worse."

Tony was really nerdy that way. He made stupid jokes and then laughed at them more than anyone else did. Steve didn't mind; he liked seeing Tony smile. It was because he knew the reason his nanny didn't argue with him was because she was afraid Tony would tell his dad, and the nanny didn't like Tony's dad either.

Tony's dad hit him, sometimes. Not all the time. Tony had told Steve one night when Steve was at Tony's big house real late; sometimes Tony invited him over when he knew his dad would be back from a day's work and he'd be in a really bad mood, but if Steve was there then Tony's dad would just smile and go to bed. Tony's dad was really nice when other people were over; Reed told Steve that one time, Tony's dad had even helped them build a big model airplane, but the next time Reed went back to Tony's house the airplane was broken up in the bin and Tony didn't want to say how it got there.

That's why Tony rubbed at his hand, and that's why he scratched his eyes all the time, because he didn't like sleeping, not when his parents were up, because Tony's dad hit Tony's mom too. Not sometimes, all the times. Steve's Ma knew this as well because she mentioned Tony's dad being mean once, and she had a really tight mouth and she didn't want to talk much more about it.

"He wasn't always like that," she said, and she kept saying that but she didn't say anything else. "He wasn't always like that."

She repeated it all the time, the same way Miss Frost repeated the spelling of Mississippi. They were learning about Huckleberry Finn in English, which was a hard book to understand because Mark Twain spelled everything wrong and Reed got really angry about that. Tony didn't care as much as he usually did because Tony didn't care about English. He said his mom was really good at it but she was a lawyer now, so she only needed to read law things, not Mark Twain.

Steve liked Tony's mom, even if he never spoke to her. Tony never really spoke to her either. When he spoke about her, he called her Mom, but when Steve was at Tony's house and Tony called down to his mom to ask for food or something, he called her Maria. Steve thought it was really weird, calling his mom Maria. He called his mom Ma, but that was just another word for mom, and mom was short for mother.

Tony's family was weird. He told him sometimes, that his family was weird, but Tony just shrugged and said he didn't know the difference. One time when Steve said it, Tony was in a really bad mood, and his eyes were all heavy like his dad's got sometimes when he was angry.

"Yeah, well your family's weird too," Tony had spat back. "Your mom works all the time and you don't even have a dad."

Tony had apologised the next day, and he had meant it too; he brought in a bar of chocolate specifically for Steve to eat at lunch, all by himself, though Steve gave him a few pieces too because Tony wasn't a bad friend, not really. He didn't even need to apologise because he was right. Steve's Ma did work all the time, and Steve's Pa was blown up way before he could remember what he looked like.

Sometimes though, Steve's Ma explained, you needed to say sorry for saying things even if what you said was the truth. Steve didn't really understand it, because surely saying the truth was a good thing, but Steve's Ma said that someday he would understand it, and then he'd know he was a grown-up. It would take a long time, she said, and she said that his own Pa had never had the chance to learn when to stay quiet either.

"Is that why he got the bump in his nose?" Steve asked. Steve's Ma laughed, but she didn't answer, so Steve thought that must've been one of those times where you didn't need to say the truth.

Steve wished he could bring Tony to hang out with Natasha Romanoff that night. Although Tony was nerdy and everyone made fun of him, he could be funny when he wanted to be, and he knew more about designer jeans and phones and stuff like that than Steve did. Natasha Romanoff had a phone as well; Steve wondered if Miss Frost though that was compensating, too.

"I wish you could come, too," he said.

"Yeah," Tony sighed. "Natasha Romanoff is really pretty, isn't she?"

"Is she?" Steve said, which was a stupid thing to say. Natasha Romanoff was very, very pretty. "Didn't notice. She was too busy pushing me off a jungle gym."

Tony laughed so hard at that he couldn't even say bye when his nanny rolled up in front of Steve's house and Steve got out. It was okay though, because Steve liked seeing Tony laugh, even if his dad didn't. Tony said that when his dad saw him laughing, he didn't like it at all.

Steve hoped he hadn't been too funny. He didn't want Tony to get into trouble for laughing on account of him.

Steve had seen Tony's dad hit his mom once, but he hadn't said anything. Tony had been up in his room grabbing a robot he'd built to show Steve - the robot could walk by itself and everything, as long as it had batteries and Tony had the remote. Steve was sitting in the living room in the Starks' big white leather sofa. There were glass doors leading into their kitchen, the type Steve's Ma really wanted for the back door. Curtains were usually pulled over those doors so you couldn't see through, but Steve and Tony had opened them because they needed light to try and grow sea monkeys on the marble floor.

Steve could see right through into the kitchen. Tony's dad walked in from work, and he walked really hard up the hall, but when he saw Steve he caught himself and put on a big wide smile. You could see all his teeth, but it was nothing like Bucky's smile. It was scary, a little, but Steve knew Tony's dad would never hurt him; Tony's dad knew Steve's Ma. Steve knew because every time he talked to Tony's dad the man asked him, "How's Sarah? Working too hard as usual?"

Tony's dad even joked that he used to kiss Steve's Ma, but Steve knew that wasn't true because his Ma loved Joseph more than anything, and she had never mentioned kissing anyone else. Tony was a bit of a liar, though not as much as Clint Barton, so he must've got it from somewhere.

That day, the day Steve saw Tony's dad drinking wine in the kitchen and then Tony's mom said something and it made his face get all tight, that day Tony's dad didn't really say anything to Steve, just smiled, ruffled his hair and then made his way into the kitchen. Tony's mom had been running around all day wiping her hands on her apron, fluffing up her hair, making sure things were perfect. She had cooked him a meal and everything, Tony said it was their anniversary.

Parents were meant to be happy on their anniversaries. Steve knew that if Joseph was still alive, his Ma would be the happiest woman ever.

If dads were like Tony's, Steve was glad he didn't have one.

It came from nowhere. They were just talking - Steve could even hear laughter, it's what made him look up, that unfamiliar sound coming from Tony's dad's mouth - and then _slap_. Right across the cheek. It sounded like he'd hit a table; he might've just hit a table, Steve slapped the coffee table at home later on to check and it sounded the same. But he couldn't kid himself; Tony's mom's face went really red, but her right cheek even more so, and she touched her skin and got up really quickly from the table.

She closed the curtains. She had noticed them open when her head turned, after he'd hit her. When he'd moved her face. "Will you maintain some sense of decency?" she snapped at him, the moment the curtains were closed. Steve could still hear her, though it was whispered. It was whisper-shouted.

"He's just a boy," Tony's dad said, but he sounded unsure. Steve had never heard someone speak like that before; so uncaring, yet also like he was drowning. He was drowning. He was drunk. Was he drunk?

He had to be. People made bad decisions when they were drunk; Clint Barton's brother drove a car into a tree and he was lucky he wasn't dead. That's what the teachers said, that's what they all said in the staff room.

"So? He could still tell someone, and then where would we be? Do you want to lose the house, Howard? Is that what you want?"

Tony was back. He stood in the door. There was blood dripping down his wrist, and his face was awfully pinched. He looked a lot like the first day Steve had met him, but he was paler, and there were tears building up in his eyes and he wasn't saying anything.

That's what scared Steve, a little. Not the slap; the silence after it.

He wanted to go home.

He told Tony. Tony walked right into the kitchen, not even hesitating, like he'd done it a million times before. His mom and dad were standing beside each other, leaning against the kitchen counter. His hand was on her hip. They looked like the picture of Steve's Ma and Pa that hung up in his Ma's room.

It didn't make sense. He had hit her, and they just stood there, smiling at Tony like he was the best thing that ever happened to them.

"Steve wants to go home," Tony told them.

"I'll drive you," Tony's dad said, but his mom looked at him real sharp then, and his shoulders lowered. "Of course," he muttered. "Of course. I'll get you a driver, Steve."

Steve got a driver, which was really just a taxi, and when he got home he worried a little about Tony. He got his Ma's mobile - took it out of her coat pocket, then left a note apologising for it - and he looked for Tony's phone number, because he'd put it in there when Tony got a mobile ages ago. He pressed the contact and he typed out a message, as quickly as his fingers could allow.

_U ok?_

The text came back almost instantly. Tony was always faster at typing than Steve was; faster at everything than Steve was.

_Im fine. Everythings good after for a while_

Steve bit down on his lip until it bled.

 _He hit her,_ he typed, but he deleted it and didn't press send. He didn't need to. Tony knew.

The next morning, he had expected to walk into school and see Tony with a black eye, but he didn't. Tony was right; there was a calm in the house after that, for at least a couple days.

(Then Tony got a A on a biology exam instead of an A+, and Steve spotted the giant purple mark on the boy's thigh as they got changed for gym.)

Steve didn't know why he remembered that day just before Natasha Romanoff came to his front door, but he did. He remembered that day a lot, when he stopped to think about it. If he didn't think about it, he didn't remember it for ages.

He hoped it would be quiet that night for Tony. He hoped the nanny would stay, though she wasn't much of a buffer.

He wished he could tell Mr. Xavier, but he had the sneaking suspicion that he already knew. Even at eleven, Steve could tell that there were some things adults knew and did nothing about. Tony's dad was a very important man, and his mom was very smart, and they lived in a big house, bigger than anybody's, even Bucky's, and he had sisters. Tony was an only child, but he had two bedrooms, and he chose at night which one to go to.

Natasha Romanoff was on his doorstep, and she was wearing a different outfit than she had been at school that afternoon. Steve didn't have enough clean clothes to do that, so he was still in his once-white trainers and scuffed jeans, though Natasha did not look him up and down like she did all the time with Bucky (he began to think it wasn't judgement that she looked at Bucky with, but something else).

"Hey, Rogers," she said.

"Um. Hi."

"You ready to go?"

Steve had stepped back to allow her into the house, but she made no move. He furrowed his eyebrows together in confusion.

"Go where?" he asked.

She flashed him a devilish smile. "How willing are you to break the rules, Rogers?"

Steve looked back. His Ma was at work. He grabbed the notepad from the hall table and scribbled a note for her, then popped it on the front door, so she couldn't miss it even if she was tired and someone had died that day.

"You've read my file," he said, suddenly sure of that fact. "Answer it yourself."

It was the first sentence he had spoken to her without a single waver, and the grin he got in response was equal parts terrifying and satisfying. It was a weird combination, but Natasha Romanoff was a bunch of weird things put together.

If Steve's Ma was dead, he'd be just like her. He'd be an orphan, though he might have stayed in America. He wondered if she missed Russia sometimes, but he didn't want to ask. It was one of those truths people might not want to say.

They walked down to Main Street in silence. Natasha Romanoff scuffed her new Converse kicking stones along as they went, but she was still faster than Steve, and she barely broke a sweat. When they stopped moving, her breath was even and clear, whereas Steve's had a little hoarseness to it, a little asthma in the back of his throat.

"They're all closed," he wheezed, looking up at the signs. They were dull and the windows were shuttered, though some of the stores didn't even have shutters because they didn't have enough to steal.

Natasha Romanoff didn't seem fazed. She moved over to the sweet shop and took a pin out of her hair.

"What're you doing?" Steve asked her in a whisper, kind of the same volume as Tony's mom had whispered.

"I'm breaking in," she replied coolly. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

Steve knew the owner of the shop. His daughters were just away to university, and his wife worked with his Ma. She was a physical therapist and did a lot of stuff for free. She was a good woman, apparently, and the owner always gave Steve some free sweets as a thanks, because Steve's Ma helped him one night when he was real sick and he'd never had the chance to repay her.

"I'm not stealing anything," Steve said with resolution. To emphasise his point, he crossed his arms and stood at a distance from Natasha Romanoff, almost in the middle of the street. "I'm not stealing anything."

"You've said that," she replied. "I never said anything about stealing." She was still poking about in the lock with her hairpin. Steve rolled his eyes.

"What're you gonna do then?" he asked. "Why break in if you're not gonna steal something?"

Natasha Romanoff shrugged. "Just like breaking into places," she said. "Don't want to make life difficult for anyone, though, so I don't take anything. I like the way it feels."

Steve knew what she meant. It kinda felt like his heart was too tight in his chest, like his throat was in his mouth, like he felt just before he climbed the jungle gym for the first time. He didn't know the word for it then, but his Ma would. He made a mental note to ask her when he got home; that is, if he ever worked out a way to bring up the fact he broke into a store without using the words 'broke in.'

"That's never gonna work," Steve said to Natasha. She looked up at him from under all her hair. It was more red in the dark, if that was possible. "You're doing it wrong."

"You show me then, Rogers," she said, passing the hairpin over. "How someone like you learned how to pick a lock, I have no-"

The door clicked open. Steve passed the hairpin back, and without looking at her, walked into the store.

It was the only moment so far in his life that he felt even remotely cool, even slightly like Bucky Barnes. It was a good feeling, but hard to keep up. For one, he had to look back to make sure she was following him, and though she was, it ruined the illusion. He was just Steve Rogers again.

They kept walking about until they settled on the fire escape, which they could've sat on without picking the lock in the first place, but it was the principle. The fire escape was small and it hurt Steve's butt to sit on, and Natasha Romanoff's legs were all tangled up in his but she smelt nice, so he didn't mind that much. They had locked the door behind them so all they had to do when whatever _this_ was ended was jump down onto the asphalt and walk back home.

"That was pretty impressive," Natasha Romanoff said. Her lips were very round, like a heart. She was never afraid of anything, and her eyeliner was crooked. There was too much of it on her right eye, but maybe that was purposeful, to take away from the scar just above her left.

"Yeah," Steve said. "I'm pretty good at stuff like that."

"Breaking and entering?"

"Finding ways out of things." There were little flowers growing on the ivy that clung to the bricks. Steve plucked them out of the foliage and began picking out their petals, letting them fall in the night breeze to the pavement. "Where'd you get that scar?"

Natasha Romanoff copied his actions, grabbing a few purple flowers herself. " _Clematis_ ," she said. If she had been right or wrong, Steve wouldn't have known. "This one?" She touched just above her eye. Steve almost asked what other one he could've been talking about, but then he remembered it was Natasha Romanoff he was talking to. She probably worked for the KGB at some stage.

They'd learnt about the KGB in history, but Steve knew more about it because of The Man From Uncle. It was his favourite show, because his Pa used to watch it.

"I got it in a fire," she said.

"Oh," Steve said. "Is that why you like fire?"

"Why would a scar make me like fire?"

"I don't know." Steve shrugged. He dropped the flower down between the grating of the fire escape. "You're the only person I know with a scar like that, and you're the only one I know who likes fire so much."

"Bunsen burners make everything more fun," Natasha said. "Chemistry's boring otherwise."

"Wouldn't know," he said. "All of chemistry's pretty boring for me."

"Same," Natasha said, "but I want to be a teacher, so I need to know a little bit so I can teach other people."

"You want to be a teacher?"

"Is that so shocking?"

"Yes. I thought you'd be an assassin or something."

She actually laughed then. Like a proper, full blown laugh. She was beautiful when she laughed, like a Disney princess, like Steve's Ma.

"I like you, Rogers," she said, once she had recovered. She threw a few flowers over her shoulder, and they got caught in the wild expanse of her hair. "You're fun."

"As fun as Bucky?"

A small, amused smirk crossed her face. "Yeah," she said. "He never does this with me. One time, we stole a gobstopper, and he felt so bad about it he pays twice for every sweet he buys now. Once at the till and another in tips."

She went quiet for a second. Steve almost wished Bucky was there with them; for some reason, it felt like it would've made the night complete, sitting with him and Natasha out on the fire escape. Might as well bring Tony along too, now he thought about it. And Jane. And Betty too, he supposed.

"James is a good kid," Natasha said.

"We're all kids," Steve replied.

He didn't understand. Natasha Romanoff laughed because she knew.

"Some of us more than others," she said.

Steve kinda understood then. Tony and Natasha; they were less kid than he was, and he was less than Bucky.

"Well, I wish I was more kid," he said.

Natasha Romanoff leaned her head back on the fire escape.

"Yeah," she said. "Me too."


	6. Chapter 6

Bucky's room was bigger than Steve's, but in the morning it was duller, probably because Bucky had those fancy black-out blinds Steve had seen on the shopping channels. Winnie pulled them just so that a little ray of light could make its way onto the carpet in the morning, and in that sunshine dust settled thickly in curtains.

Bucky was asleep, his mouth hanging open, his lips chapped in the cold. It was close to Christmas, only one more day of school left before the holidays, and it hadn't even snowed yet. George - that was Bucky's dad, he'd told Steve ages ago to just call him that, though Winnie called him Georgie or darling or love - said that there wouldn't be any snow that year, but he was just trying to stop Mary and Delilah getting all excited for it. It snowed every year in Leavenworth, but some years it was just a little flurry, a little dusting of the grass. Other years it was a veritable blizzard, and school was called off even earlier than usual. Those were Steve's favourite years, because it meant sometimes his Ma couldn't get to work either and they'd stand in the kitchen and make gingerbread men.

Steve liked it when his Ma didn't go to work, though he knew she couldn't do it all the time because she had a Very Important Job, everyone said so, but still. Not all nurses worked the hours she did; Steve knew because Booger Wilson's Ma was a matron and she only worked while Booger was at school, she picked him up at the gates every day. Rumlow and Schmidt made fun of him for that, but Steve thought it was quite nice, not that he ever said.

The day before, Steve had stayed at the Barnes' house until about midnight, and then Winnie got a call from his Ma and she said Steve could just stay over, because his Ma had a bit of a cold and she wanted to get some rest. Steve wanted to argue that he was good at nursing his Ma, he was good at making soup, especially if it was for other people, but he also really wanted to spend time with Bucky, so he just stayed quiet.

Natasha Romanoff had stayed over too, because her da needed to go to a big meeting with the education board about reforms or something that Steve didn't really understand. Natasha Romanoff even smiled at him when she saw him, so maybe breaking into that store was worth it after all. They didn't even get caught, not when they left or nothing. They were the ultimate team. That's what Bucky said; the three of them, they were the Dream Team (four, counting Barton, because Natasha Romanoff needed to count Barton into everything) (Five, including Tony, because Steve wanted to include him).

With a yawn, Steve rolled over to face Bucky, just for a moment. Bucky was maybe the heaviest sleeper he had ever met, and he rarely had nightmares. Steve had nightmares all the time, especially when he was in the house with old Rosie. She couldn't battle monsters, and she didn't know how to work the monster spray like his Ma did.

Sometimes he dreamed about being in school and running through the corridors but it was dark and no one was there and his Ma didn't know where he was and neither did he.

Sometimes he dreamed that he was eating his lunch with Tony and Tony suddenly grew a moustache and got taller and hit Steve, _smack_ , right across the face.

Sometimes he dreamed that Rumlow and Schmidt became tall, really, really big, like giants, and they towered over him in the playground that nobody really played in and they made fun of him for being a momma's boy and then they stepped on him with their big shoes, though sometimes their shoes had spikes on the bottom and other times they were just regular white Converse.

Sometimes Steve dreamed he was in bed with Bucky, and he woke up with weird knots in his stomach, and sometimes in those dreams Bucky was really, really nice, even nicer than he was in real life, and he said things like Steve was the best guy he had ever met, and then other times, in those dreams, Bucky didn't say any of that. Sometimes, those other times, Bucky said things like he never wanted to hang out with Steve again and he kicked him out of the bed and then his house and Steve wasn't friends with him anymore, if friends was what they were.

Steve looked at Bucky's face. He considered for what wasn't the first time his cheekbones, the valley of his chest as it rose and fell, the slope of his brow, how his eyelashes cast shadows over his cheeks, how his tanned skin was pulled taut over his face and already wrinkled around his eyes from laughing. Steve liked looking at Bucky; it made him feel like a proper artist. The teacher in his school who taught art said that humans were the biggest masterpiece of all, and sometimes Steve could see that, especially when there was only a little bit of light and he was beside Bucky Barnes, the coolest guy in school.

He spent so much time looking at him, mentally painting a picture, mapping out where his brushes would move, that he barely noticed when grey eyes greeted him.

"Hey, Steve," Bucky muttered. His voice was thick and lay heavy in the bottom of his throat. "Something on my face?"

Steve shook his head no, smushing himself even further into Bucky's pillow. They had tried sleeping top-to-toe for a while, but then Bucky complained about the smell of Steve's feet and Steve complained that Bucky kept kicking him in the face like he was a football and they agreed that top-to-top was better. They even shared a pillow because Bucky liked having two pillows under him because he got a crick in his neck.

"Just checkin' to see if you were awake," Steve told him.

"I am now," Bucky murmured, "but I wish I wasn't."

Groaning, Steve flopped onto his back once more. Bucky made a sound that came from the back of his throat. Steve had taken some of the covers in his movement. "Triple maths," they moaned in unison. The only person who appreciated triple maths in the morning was Tony Stark, maybe accompanied by Reed Richards. Sue Storm, too, once Steve realised she was a person who existed. Nobody really saw much of her. Bucky called her the Invisible Girl, and Steve told him that was mean, so Bucky just said it quieter, and only when Steve could hear, nobody else.

"Boys!" Winnie called out. "Get up."

Bucky barely had time to sit up before Winnie appeared around the door. Her smile shifted into a strange expression as she took in Steve, blazing with embarrassment, still in his jeans, and Bucky, eyes wide, in nothing but his boxers.

"Oh my God, Mom!" Bucky yelled. Steve considered crawling back under the covers, but was too interested to see what would happen, and too eager not to embarrass himself further. "I told you to knock!"

Winnie's eyes moved between Steve and Bucky with a speed that suggested she was figuring out some complex puzzle. Maybe not too complex, because she was easily broken out of it when Steve gave her a timid wave.

"Hi, Mrs Barnes," he said, still feeling weird about calling her by her first name. She didn't bother to correct him that time; highly unusual. "The floor was hurting my back. Hope you don't mind."

With only a second of reluctance, Winnie closed her mouth. She ran her hand through her tight curls and swallowed thickly.

"No, not at all," she said. "I just - I could've got you an air mattress, if you'd wanted. I'm gonna make more pancakes." Her hand was on the doorknob. "Take your time coming down for breakfast, boys."

The door slammed behind her, but Bucky's door always slammed. It was something to do with drafts and air currents and other things Jane was really good at explaining but that always confused Steve.

Steve and Bucky looked at each other.

"My mom's weird," Bucky said, in way of apology. He pulled himself out of bed and Steve averted his eyes. Bucky never felt awkward getting changed in front of him, but Steve thought it was a bit weird, so he looked away.

Steve pulled on a shirt, not caring about his crumpled jeans. "Not as weird as mine," he replied.

It was the right thing to say, because he was rewarded with Bucky grinning and rustling his hair, just like George did.

They were the first down to breakfast apart from George, who was all dressed up for work. He had _The Leavenworth Mail_ in his hands. It was a thin newspaper that Steve had only read a few times in hospital waiting rooms. There was nothing much in it, just who was born and who had died and whose birthday was that week and what potholes had yet to be filled. Most of the pictures included Bucky or Natasha, who were simultaneously the most gifted academically and the most athletic of the middle school, and therefore got commemorated in the smallest newspaper in New England.

Winnie set a pair of scissors on the table in front of George, and when he finished his cup of coffee - black, which was disgusting. Steve had tried it a couple times - he picked them up and began defacing the newspaper. A small collection of pictures of Bucky began to develop on the table, with a couple of Delilah and Mary mixed in from the elementary school awards ceremony that had recently taken place.

Steve was never in the newspaper. He doubted most people knew he existed.

Mary and Natasha Romanoff, both wrapped in dressing gowns and wearing bunny slippers, skulked into the kitchen and chose their place at the table. Natasha got to work pouring orange juice for her and her new favourite Barnes, who shared her penchant for chokers and black clothing, as well as heavy metal music, much to Winnie's dismay.

"Really, girls," she had said, on more than one occasion. "There's bound to be nicer music for beautiful women to listen to."

Winnie was very like that. She had strict ideas about what beautiful women like her daughters and Natasha should do, and was endlessly irritated with the ladies who did not fit her ideals. Steve didn't really understand; years of being friends with Jane and raised by a single mother had made him think of women as nothing more than boys with boobs. Why shouldn't they choose what they wanted to be, even if they were beautiful?

Bucky gave Steve a look across the table that meant 'don't say anything,' and as it wasn't Steve's house, he obeyed. There was a large plate of pancakes in the middle of the table, and he grabbed four of them before Delilah, who loved pancakes more than anything, got out of bed.

Winnie's pancakes were associated throughout Leavenworth with loose lips. If you wanted someone to divulge a deep secret, invite them to the Barnes house for breakfast. Steve had even heard that it was Winnie and George's breakfast table that encouraged the old mayor to admit to rigging the ballots. (Of course, no one really cared, because the mayor of Leavenworth had as much power as the ordinary citizen did, but it was the principle of the thing. George ran for mayor instead, and served a brief stint before deciding to cash in politics in favour of a cushy office job in the civil service.)

Finally, Delilah found herself at the kitchen table. She kissed her father on the side of his head, and he grabbed her in a one-armed hug. Delilah was always George's favourite, not that Mary minded; being less favoured meant she had more freedom to do the things she enjoyed, such as buying flammable chemicals from Tony and watching them burn with Natasha at her side.

Her presence meant the pancakes practically evaporated and Bucky, having deigned to eat his cereal first, made a desperate attempt to steal a pancake from Natasha's plate.

"Don't try, Barnes," she said. (Around the table, five pairs of eyes looked up at her term of address. She should've clarified which Barnes; a lesson Steve had learnt early on.) "I do ballet. I could kill you with my thigh muscles alone."

Bucky made a sound halfway between a squawk and a yell. It was the only time Steve ever heard him sound remotely like Tony Stark.

Winnie rolled her eyes, and George began laughing so hard he had to set his paper down. He even choked, just a little bit, on his banana. Delilah got up from her seat at the speed of light and began pounding on her father's back.

A single, half chewed piece of banana spewed across the room and landed on the kitchen floor.

"Really, Delilah," Winnie chastised, as George wiped his eyes. "I have to clean that now-"

"Did you want him to _die_?"

"Of course not, but he wasn't going to die, was he? I've only just cleaned the tiles, my dear-"

George continued to cough. Bucky was now in hysterics, and Steve couldn't keep the smile off his face, even despite the disappointment on Winnie's face.

The Barnes' black cat skulked out from under Steve's legs and made its way over to the banana, pawing at it curiously.

"Freud," Winnie warned. "Freud, no."

Freud the cat looked up at her and cocked his head on the side, as if to ask, 'what, this? This is what you don't want me to do?'

"Freud," Winnie said in a threatening tone. "Don't you dare."

Freud's tongue slipped out of his mouth, and before Winnie could grab him, he'd eaten the banana.

An overwhelming chorus of _"eeewwww"_ rose from the kitchen, and Bucky actually fell off his chair, having reached the peak of dying of laughter. Delilah was clutching to her father whose coughs intermingled with chuckles, and the only people who were immune was Steve and Winnie. At least, the former was, until he saw Bucky try to claw himself back up onto his seat and slip on spilled apple juice.

Steve didn't think he'd ever laughed harder. The whole household was late for school and work, but none of them, bar Winnie (though Steve thought he saw her break a smirk, and she kissed George before he left with more gusto than usual, so she must've seen the humour in it somewhere) minded in the slightest.

Steve wanted nothing more than to live with the Barnes forever. If he had a choice, he'd bring his Ma and they'd both set up camp in the front room, lying up beside Freud during the night. It would be worth it for the breakfasts alone.

"Sorry we're late, sir," Bucky said upon entry to maths class. Their classmates, who had already suffered fifteen minutes of hell by that point, glared at Steve and Bucky, whose faces still had ghosts of smiles on them. "My dad choked this morning."

Although he was telling the truth - or most of it - the teacher didn't even look up from his book.

"Go and sit down, Barnes," he said, not lifting his head from the page he was writing on. "You too, Rogers," when Steve did not make any move to sit down.

"Dunno why he was such an ass," Bucky said after class was over and they were released. "Nat's dad is the headmaster, like, and he didn't care."

Steve shrugged. "Guess we did miss some of his class," he said. "Do you mind?"

Bucky reached up to Steve's locker - it was a top locker, despite his constant requesting for a bottom - and grabbed English books for him.

"Yeah, but do we ever learn anything anyway?" Bucky asked, rolling his eyes. He'd picked that up from Jane over the months since he'd started hanging out with Steve. Somewhere along the line, the popular kids had made their way over to Steve's table at lunch, and after Jane and Tony recovered from the shock, they actually found themselves getting along.

Steve didn't understand it, but he wasn't going to question it. His worst fear was, and had always been, that Bucky hanging out with him was some kind of sick joke, but the distaste on Clint's face every time he was presented with Reed Richards seriously made Steve doubt that they would put themselves through that for a prank. Still ...

"This morning was good though, wasn't it?" Bucky said. There was fifteen minutes until English class, so they had time to wander through the halls without purpose for a while, not that Natasha did. Bucky had stopped trying to keep up with her though, and he stuck with Steve most of the time. Natasha didn't seem to mind, because Bucky still looked at her like she'd hung the moon, so she was the real winner.

"Yeah, it was great," Steve said. "I've never laughed so hard in my life."

"I hope the cat gets the shits," Bucky said, because it was a well documented fact that any kind of fruit did not react well with Freud Buttons Barnes. "It'll piss Mom off, but it'll be hilarious."

Bucky relied on hilarity a lot lately, even going so far as to create it in his own home. It was because when it got really quiet at times, his mom and dad decided to fill the gap and shout instead. The Barnes house wasn't meant to be silent; they were just trying to keep it normal, but Bucky didn't like it at all.

"Do you wanna go out tonight?" Steve asked. Bucky's face had gotten all tight, and his eyes were glistening like they did when he got unfocused.

Bucky blinked a few times. "Yeah. Yeah, that would be good," he said. "Mom ... Mom's a bit cranky lately, you know?"

Jane said her dad saw Bucky's dad down at the pub all the time. Bucky's dad drank even more than Jane's dad, but less than Tony's dad. Bucky's dad did something that neither of them did though; he gambled. Apparently it was like playing a game but it cost you money instead of imagination. Steve didn't see the appeal, but he didn't want to ask about it either, because Jane told him a lot of stories about a lot of people that she heard from her mom but wasn't supposed to say, and he wasn't sure how true they were.

Plus, he liked George. He didn't want to think that he gambled and sometimes kissed other women when he won, even if it didn't mean anything. Kissing was between moms and dads and married couples, not anyone else. At least in Steve's head. But then again, he'd never had a dad, so he didn't know how moms and dads were expected to act.

Steve loved going out with Bucky. Sometimes they'd go to the bowling alley or they'd get Nick Fury to bring them and Natasha and Mary to the cinema or the shopping centre, other times they'd just go to the hill that separated their two houses and lie down on the grass.

Those other times were Steve's favourite. Bucky always got soft on the hill; his hair wasn't gelled back and he didn't have the cocky smile on his face and he rarely mentioned Natasha or Clint, which was nice. They didn't talk, at least not much, even if Steve really wanted to. But it was nice.

He waited all day anxiously, buzzing in anticipation. He ran all the way home and worked through his homework at break-neck speed. He shoved his dinner down his throat and told his Ma about his day the fastest he ever had.

"You're going to see Bucky tonight, aren't you?" she asked with a smile, once she managed to get a word in. Steve nodded a few times fast. "Well," she said, pressing a kiss to the side of his head. "Just be home before too late, okay?"

"But it's Christmas break now, Ma!" Steve protested. "No school the next day."

"Be home by midnight, Steve," his Ma said. It had a different tone, so he didn't argue. He didn't like fighting his Ma; she had enough to worry about. "You had an early morning, and if you stay out too late it gets cold, and you might get sick, okay?"

"Okay, Ma."

Jane and Tony went to the hill too, but usually just with Steve, who lay down on the grass or else did his homework in silence.

Jane and Tony liked looking for space rocks. They didn't talk much in school because Tony liked arguing with people and so did Jane, but that was too much arguing for one pair to cope with. Jane thought that everybody had opinions on everything but Tony just had opinions on the things he considered important so they argued more about that than anything else worth arguing about.

Jane stared at Tony almost as much as Tony stared at Reed Richards or, on occasion, Steve (Steve could only guess that Tony stared at him more, but was getting better at hiding it as the years went on, because he caught him less and less).

But space rocks. They both liked space rocks a lot, and aliens too. Tony was convinced that the ridges of Leavenworth's hills were ancient, and therefore aliens would see them from up high and know they'd been there ages and they'd put evidence down there for humans to find. It was all a big test, you see; aliens were tricky like that. Only smart people like Jane and Tony could figure them out.

Tony never asked Reed Richards to go looking for space rocks, only Jane, and they only went when Steve was with them. Bucky only went with them once, one time, and it was that day after the morning where George choked on his banana.

Steve was also a little annoyed at Bucky that day, but he'd tried not to show it, and he didn't even really realise it himself. Around a month beforehand, there had been a voluntary art class after school for those who wished someday to be artists. Steve hadn't wanted to go.

"Come on, Steve," Bucky said. "I've seen your sketches, they're amazing."

"I'm not an artist, Buck," he'd said. "I'm not going."

But Steve was not good at even pretending to withstand Bucky's influence, so he'd ended up signing onto the class. Bucky did too, for emotional support.

"I'm rubbish at art," he said with a shrug. "But I'll get to spend time with all the hot artist chicks, so that's cool, right?"

"Gee, thanks Buck."

(Steve was secretly very pleased, because he knew that despite Bucky's assurances it was only for the cute girls, Bucky was almost entirely participating in the art class to spend more time with Steve. That meant he _wanted_ to spend time with him, which was almost too much to comprehend, and which still tasted like a bad joke when he tried saying it out loud to himself in the mirror.)

Bucky sat beside Steve in the art class, real close, so close Steve could feel the heat that always came off Bucky in waves. He was always warm; even his hands when they grabbed onto Steve's shoulders or slapped his back were as toasty as mittens. Steve was the opposite. It was why they were ... Whatever they were. Friends, he supposed.

The first time Bucky picked up a pencil, Steve watched with eagerness in his veins, wondering if for once, maybe he would have the upper hand. Instead of Bucky explaining geography and history, he could explain colour theory and how to capture the right angle and how to draw hands, which were always the worst but yet the most intriguing.

Bucky put his pencil to the page and drew. Steve watched with an open mouth. The teacher came past and put her hands on his shoulders.

"Such a talent!" she declared. "How long have you been drawing?"

Bucky looked up at the clock and shrugged. "About ten minutes," he said.

"No, I mean practicing. How long have you been practicing?"

"I haven't been practicing."

The teacher dissolved into a fit, and as she began to extol the virtues of Bucky's rendition of a robin, Steve's pencil snapped in his hand.

Steve could stab Bucky in the eye with his pencil, and then Bucky wouldn't be good at football or drawing or dodgeball or netball or maths or anything ever again. It would also mean one less of those grey eyes in the world, which made Steve feel homicidal in the best of days for a reason he couldn't quite pinpoint.

No, he'd let him keep his eye. For now.

Instead of committing assault on Bucky, he decided to spend the rest of the evening after that class complaining to Betty. She had came over to his house to help him out with biology, because he definitely wasn't going to ask Bucky for help for anything ever again (which was abundantly untrue, and broken within the next forty eight hours) and she was lying on his bed popping bubblegum and reading about respiration.

"Like, he's just so perfect at _everything,"_ Steve complained. _Pop_ went Betty's gum. "Like sports and maths and English and science and art too, now. Art used to be my thing! I want to be the artist, not him!"

"I thought you said you didn't want to be an artist," Betty said, looking up with disinterest, which was unusual. She usually regarded Steve with the same interest everyone else delivered to Bucky, though Steve did not appreciate this nor recognise it. "You wanted to be a soldier."

"That's not the point, Betty," Steve snapped. That was the end of the conversation, because Betty was quite the unforgiving person in her young age, and slammed the textbook closed at the tone in Steve's voice. She left soon afterwards, and Steve never found it within himself to apologise, though he wanted to a lot the next day when he had to walk in silence beside Bucky to class.

Steve didn't think they were going to talk about the fact they weren't talking. He didn't even think Bucky recognised he'd hurt Steve in any way. Then, Bucky surprised him.

They were lying down on the grass, and there was water soaking the back of Steve's t-shirt, sticking it to his skin. Bucky's hair was fluffier than usual with the humidity, but in the darkness, Steve could only rely on his memory to tell him that.

"Thought you woulda been over with them," Steve said, closing his eyes so he didn't have to look at Bucky, "considering you're all into science now."

"Don't be moody," Bucky said. "I told you, I'm rubbish at art. I couldn't keep taking a class in something I was rubbish at."

"But you're not rubbish," Steve said. He focused very intently on his breathing; it was harder to keep himself from panicking when he was flat on his back like this. "You got a B."

"Yeah, and Harvard ain't looking for Bs, Steve."

Steve huffed a laugh. "Harvard's a way off yet, Buck."

"Yeah, I know." He sighed. His eyes were definitely open; it made his breath come out differently. Steve knew the exact amount of seconds, knew how he would huff heavier when he couldn't see the expanse of stars above them. Stars made the air clearer, easier, for both of them. "Still. The teachers keep saying I could do it, I just - don't know."

Steve thought of his friend lying beside him, who thought just the same as he did about the stars, or so he thought. They hadn't really talked about it yet. Then he thought of the report that was still festering in the bottom of his schoolbag, and the Cs that littered all of his subjects, decorated with a couple Ds for good measure.

Here was Bucky complaining about a B and what did it matter? They weren't even in high school yet. Why did he care? He knew he was smart, and handsome, and better at everything than everyone. What did he expect Steve to say?

"Guys!"

Jane's voice was loud and pitched. Steve's eyes opened just in time to see if Bucky would flinch or not. He didn't. He smiled at Jane all soft and Steve wanted very much to throw the space rock Tony was carrying right at Jane's stupid face.

"If you look up now, you can see Ursa Major and Ursa Minor!"

Steve pushed himself up onto his elbows. He couldn't understand what she was talking about, couldn't even squint to make out any kind of shape, but that was nothing new. He was used to feeling as if he was drowning in how smart all his friends were.

"That's Big Bear and Little Bear, isn't it?" Bucky asked. Jane nodded so fast her glasses slipped right off her nose and landed in the mud. By the time she grabbed them, she was the same colour as the frames.

Bucky leaned into Steve. He was warm, even though they'd been sitting out for ages and it was freezing. He didn't move away though; he remembered his Ma worrying about his health, and thought that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing being reluctant friends with a human blanket.

"The Big Dipper and the Little Dipper," Bucky clarified. Steve made a sound in the back of his throat that obviously pleased Bucky, but was really just a cough.

Steve didn't need Bucky explaining things to him. He knew stuff already, just not stupid stuff about stars and gravity and art, apparently.

Tony threw the rock he had been holding to the side. "I still think it's just a rock," he muttered.

Jane rolled her eyes. Steve wondered if it hurt when she did that; she did it quite dramatically, and therefore quite spectacularly, that he was surprised her eyeballs didn't get stuck.

"Tony, I swear to God. Do you have to take the fun out of _everything_? Just because you're friends with Reed Richards doesn't mean you have to be so _annoying_..."

"Hey, Steve?"

Bucky's voice was as warm as his body, and immediately Steve tuned out Jane's rant at Tony and paid complete attention to the boy beside him.

"Yeah, Buck?"

"That's you and me up there." He was pointing at the sky. Steve recognised it as a weak attempt to patch up the awkwardness that had been between them since the doling out of reports, but he sort of respected Bucky for it.

Being Bucky's friend was better than being his enemy ever was, anyway.

"You're the Big Dipper and I'm the Little Dipper?" Steve said, raising an eyebrow. "Ha ha, Buck. So creative."

Bucky shook his head, obviously exasperated. "No, Steve! If you'd look at the stars instead of me..."

Steve went a healthy shade of red, but the night hid it well. He hoped.

"Look! The Big Bear is clearly leading the Little Bear. You're the leader, I'm just along for the ride."

Steve looked up at the sky. He wanted to go home. Bucky had made his stomach go all in knots, just like the nightmares did.

He frowned and pointed. "What about that one? The bright star, at the end of the little one?"

"That's Polaris," Bucky said, in a voice that betrayed his happiness at knowing that. "The North Star, one of the brightest stars in the sky. Sailors used it for navigation."

"It led them home."

"Exactly."

There was silence, for just a moment. No arguing Jane or Tony, for they had once again faded into the distance. If he squinted, Steve could see them kicking at a lump on the ground and waving their hands around at each other.

"You're my best friend," Bucky said, rather unexpectedly. Steve looked at him for just a second, putting his head to the side like Freud the cat did when he was confused.

"What about Natasha?" Steve asked. "Or Clint?"

Bucky's face fell, just a little, which Steve didn't understand. As if Bucky had taken it that Steve didn't _want_ to be his friend, that he was looking for a getaway.

Steve almost did something embarrassing like cry, which was stupid, because they spent ninety percent of their time together, of course they were gonna be considered best friends. But yet he had never expected to find himself here; on this hill, with Tony bright and shining across the fields as he argued with Jane (he did always love a good argument, and when Steve heard him debating he felt his stomach go all knotty at the spectacle) and with Bucky fucking Barnes as his best friend.

The declaration of being best friends - the idea that anyone could want him that much - hit him with the emotional strength of a death, which was somewhat understandable. Steve had never had a best friend before.

But yet ... But yet.

"You're my best friend too, Buck."

Bucky smiled with all his teeth. Mission accomplished.


	7. Chapter 7

Christmas came around, and without the comfortable familiarity of school, Steve wondered if he would ever see Bucky Barnes again.

For the first few days, he lived in a careful state of utter despair. No word from Bucky for twenty four hours was bad enough, but forty eight almost killed him. He rotated between lying flat on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, and trying everything and anything to not think about him at all.

He was unsuccessful, but his Ma was very pleased when she came home from work and the entire house was cleaned from top to bottom better than it had been in years, so Steve resolved to clean more often.

The twenty-fifth of December was never a big thing in the Rogers' house, mostly because if it had been, both inhabitants would've been deeply disappointed. Santa had left only one present under the dying Christmas tree Steve's Ma had got from the market - the man said it was the runt, and Sarah had always loved an underdog - and it was small. Steve wasn't expecting anything much.

The other kids would be getting Nintendos and Gameboys and Pokemon and cool shoes and designer clothes. Nick Fury would be burying Natasha in gifts and love as they spoke, and Bucky's house would be insane with the excitement.

Steve and his Ma sat in relative silence, the only sound that echoed through their living room the rustle of wrapping paper and the soft whistle of wind that bounced down the chimney.

When he opened the box, he couldn't really think of a word to say. Right there, amongst the tissue paper and the cardboard, was a pair of black, high top Converse.

Steve tried to smile. He knew his Ma had been working hours upon hours to get these; that she'd probably been storing them in the attic for ages, waiting to see the look on his face. He forced a grin and grabbed his Ma into a hug, being careful not to knock their bones together.

"Aren't you going to try them on?" his Ma asked, a little colour on her cheeks for the first time in weeks. Steve went to refuse, but instead flopped onto the ground and pulled them on.

A little big, and there was fraying on the seams, but Steve pretended not to see it. His Ma had gone to great lengths to make them look new, the packaging and everything, so he didn't want to disappoint her. He stood up and twirled around and his Ma took pictures.

She didn't allow him to go around and show Bucky on Christmas Day, because she said that was rude and other families would want to spend time together and eat dinner. They had dinner too, microwave meals, and it was very nice when Steve poured ketchup over the meat and ignored the fatty bits.

Sarah left for work on Boxing Day, and Steve left for the Barnes', because he was quite underwhelmed by Christmas and wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

"You're looking for James, pet?" Winnie said when she answered the door. Her hair was in rollers and her eyes were kind and tired. There were bags under them, and her voice was a little strained, like she'd smoked a pipe (George smoked a pipe; that was how Steve knew what a smoker's voice sounded like). "He went with Fury's girl to the playground. Said he wanted to build a snowman before it melted."

Steve went on his way to the playground, gripping a bag of piping hot leftovers that Winnie had refused to let him leave without. (Later that night, he warmed them in the microwave and ate them all up in one big bite, then felt so guilty about not saving some for his Ma he was sick in the toilet after.)

"Steve!" Bucky said, his face pink with the cold and his teeth whiter than the snow. "Cool shoes."

Steve didn't appreciate pity. The shoes were cool at the beginning of the school year, before Bucky Barnes happened. Everything was cool until it was compared to Bucky Barnes. He shrugged and climbed up to the top of the jungle gym, where Natasha Romanoff was sitting, her legs dangling off the sides.

She was wearing a fur coat and purple leggings, as well as Uggs. Steve didn't like Uggs, but Natasha Romanoff suited them; she suited everything.

"Try not to push me off this time," he said to her. She huffed a laugh, and it came out like a dragon's breath.

The morning was so cold and white it was almost impossible to tell if they were the only ones in the world or not. Certainly the only people Steve could see was Natasha beside him, seemingly uncaring of the bitterness and with wet hair stuck to her cheek like a dash of paint, and Bucky, who was halfway through a perilous looking snowman.

"This must remind you of Moscow, huh?" Steve asked.

Natasha did not look at him. Her eyes were dark, darker than ever, and they stared ahead as if she could see someone else besides the boy she had came to adore.

"Too warm," she muttered. She shook her head imperceptibly, and pursed her lips into a thin line. They came back out redder than ever. She had learned that boys liked red lips. "No shapka-ushanka in sight."

Across the playground, a yell burst through the serenity. Bucky kicked a hole through the snowman's belly, and Natasha, seemingly pulled from her trance, laughed lightly.

She dropped to the ground with practiced grace, went over to Bucky and took his pink face in her hands.

"Milii moi," she whispered, loud enough for Steve to hear if he inclined his head just so. She sounded very like Freud the cat, and it sent shivers up Steve's spine. "Vy nastol-ko sladkiy i nexhnyy." *

Her impact on Steve was increased ten-fold for her victim. Bucky didn't smile with all his teeth, or indeed any of his teeth. His lips just twisted upwards, just a little hint, like it was a secret he didn't want to tell anyone and didn't want even Natasha to know.

Then he leaned forward, and pressed their mouths together.

Steve moved back from the edge of the jungle gym. He scrambled to the other side and put his back to the two, but he knew, could feel it in his chest, that they were still kissing.

He'd never seen someone kissing before, not in real life. Bucky had been as soft as he was on the hill, at times - no, softer. He had been softer with Natasha Romanoff, of all people, who had probably just insulted him, judging by the look on her face ...

Steve pulled the inhaler out of his pocket and took a couple puffs. It didn't take the tightness from his chest.

He wished, more than anything, that he was back home.

He didn't want to know how Bucky Barnes looked at Natasha Romanoff like he loved her. He didn't want to know that Bucky Barnes held the back of Natasha Romanoff's face as they kissed, just like guys in movies did. He didn't want to know that Natasha Romanoff had to stand on her tiptoes to reach Bucky Barnes' face.

He didn't want to know.

He didn't want to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Translation: My dear, you are so sweet and gentle.
> 
> Please keep the comments coming! Every single word I hear from you guys is amazing and I appreciate your feedback so, so much. It really inspires me to keep writing, so I hope you enjoy this chapter as well! The Life and Times of Bucky Barnes should also be updated by the end of the week. Thanks for reading! :)


	8. Chapter 8

That summer was the first summer in which Steve Rogers had not only one friend but two to spread his time between. Of course, since he could remember Jane had been there as a sometime friend, oftentime acquaintance, but Tony and Bucky ... Those were real friends, ones who chose to stick with Steve not just due to geographical location, but because they actually wanted to be there.

Half the time was spent at Tony's house. Well, Tony's room, because Steve didn't much want to see Tony's dad and Tony's mom didn't say hello to him much anymore. She couldn't; her voice sounded like she was underwater when she tried.

Tony's mom was very beautiful, kinda like Tony. She had big brown eyes, as big as the moon, and when they got watery it was so sad it made Steve's stomach do flip-flops.

Tony made Steve's stomach do flip-flops sometimes too, but he tried not to think about it.

 Tony's room was really cool because it had a skylight, a big window in the roof. When the sun went down, Tony and Steve lay on their backs on his bed and looked up at the clouds moving in the sky and how the stars formed constellations. Tony knew so much about everything, from how clouds were made to where the meanings of stars came from, that Steve could spend hours just lying on the satin sheets, his eyes closed, just listening to the sound of his voice.

Tony could be annoying, but he was fun sometimes too. A lot of times, especially when Reed Richards wasn't around. When Reed wasn't around, he spoke in shorter sentences and with words that Steve could actually understand.

His voice was soft when it was night time, and Steve knew it was because Tony's dad worked in the office next to Tony's room and if he was disturbed he got really grumpy. So soft, like whispers. It put Steve to sleep sometimes, but when he woke up Tony was never there. When he woke up, Tony was either sitting on the floor deconstructing his Lego and building it into something it was never designed to be, or else slumped over his desk, drooling onto a piece of paper.

Then there was Bucky.

Bucky who dragged him out with Clint and Natasha and Jane and Betty and Tony and Reed, out to play hopscotch on the side street beside the butchers, out to climb trees in the surrounding forests, out to roll and race down the hills, out to Clint's farm.

Clint lived on a farm. Steve almost spat out his cereal when Bucky told him that. It was a Wednesday morning, and Bucky looked up from his pancakes and said, "Clint lives on a farm," just like that. Just like it was nothing, like Clint hadn't been maintaining his abundant wealth since ever Steve had known of him.

When they went to the farm, Clint opened the door and his face was bright red but nobody mentioned it, even though everybody always mentioned when somebody blushed, at least normally. Natasha walked in like she knew the place, patted Clint's dog Lucky on the head, nodded at his brother Barney who was horizontal on the couch and went onto the back porch. Everyone else, even a dazed Clint, followed suit.

Lucky barked.

They stood in a line on the back porch. Clint's mom poked her head out.

"Do you want lemonade?" she asked.

"God's sake Mom," Clint groaned. "No one wants lemonade, okay?"

He'd gone purple. His mom ducked her head and went back into the house. Steve almost felt sorry for her. She was just trying her best.

He said this to Clint.

"Your ma's just trying her best," he said.

Clint grunted. That was that.

Clint didn't like talking about his mom. He didn't like talking about his brother even more.

Sometimes Rumlow said things like, "Your brother's a druggie, Barton" or "Your brother's an alcoholic" and Clint would get really, really angry, but then, after punching Rumlow or cursing him out, he would go really quiet, so Steve thought maybe there was a little bit of truth in Rumlow's words too. There usually was; that's why they hurt so much.

Not that Rumlow hurt him. Just bruised him, sometimes.

It was awful quiet for a while standing on Clint's porch, probably because it was a porch whose existence he had denied for years. The Bartons' land stretched out before them, a sea of unexplored possibilities, but at that moment, all Steve could focus on was the heaviness of the humid air and how the bugs seemed determined to bite only Natasha.

"It's your red hair," Tony provided helpfully.

"Don't talk about my hair," Natasha replied, digging him in the stomach.

While Tony wretched over the porch railing, Steve surveyed the area. He spotted some tyres in the distance, big massive ones, like the tyres he saw on tractors that meandered in front of the school bus most mornings.

"Come on," he said, nudging Bucky in the side. Bucky took his eyes off Natasha for only a brief second to consider his best friend.

"What're you up to, Stevie?" Bucky asked, following Steve down into the grass. Steve was well aware that the rest of their companions were watching their movements closely, as he had planned. For once, Steve Rogers was going to be the life and soul of the party.

"Help me get this tyre up," Steve said to him. He hooked his hands under the rubber, wincing as the tangled grass scratched at his skin.

Bucky saluted him. "Yes, Captain," he said. He squatted down to the ground, grabbed the tyre and hoisted it up vertical, just like that. Steve liked to pretend he had assisted in any way whatsoever, even if he knew he hadn't.

Sometimes Bucky called Steve Captain. It was because it was their favourite game. They pretended the jungle gym was a ship; Bucky was always first mate, even if in real life, he totally would've been the Captain. They fashioned a wheel out of old bits of bark, and though sometimes he got splinters, Steve couldn't even feel them with the wind blowing in his face and the eternity of the playground laid out in oceans before him ...

"Get in then," Steve said. He pushed himself into the tyre, and when he managed to squeeze in, he gestured for Bucky to follow. "Come on," he said. "There's room for two."

Despite looking incredulous, Bucky, forever trusting of Steve's better judgement, got into the tyre with his friend. It was a bit of a squeeze, but they could easily fit Bucky's strong legs amongst Steve's scrawny ones. They'd have tyre burns on their legs, bare in shorts, but they wouldn't care. It would be a shared wound, a mark of the experience.

Bucky's face was in shadows despite the brightness of the outside sun. The tyre was dull and dark, like the huts they made under the Barnes' dining room table with blankets and cushions. Steve wished he had a torch so he could see more than just the shine of Bucky's wide smile, though that was reward enough already on its own.

"Hold on," Steve said.

"To what?"

Steve shrugged, and Bucky burst out into laughter. They rocked back and forth in the tyre until finally, it teetered over the side of the hill and began rolling into the fields below.

Bucky let out a whooping shout as they went, but Steve could only focus on the spinning sky above them and how his lunch was threatening to make a reappearance. His knuckles were white from where he grasped onto Bucky's thighs, and there was a very high chance that if this spinning didn't stop, he would've ripped Bucky's shorts right off.

Maybe this wasn't his best plan, because the second the hill ended, the tyre wobbled a little and then fell unceremoniously to its side, throwing both boys onto the hard dirt.

In the background, their friends called out in excitement, imploring them to bring the tyre back up the hill.

"Move your skinny ass, Rogers," Barton called out, but it was okay, because he wasn't red anymore.

The group took it in turns to go down the hill in the several tyres they could commandeer, and by the end of the night, nobody wanted to leave the farm except for Steve, who had been sick three times already.

"Hey," Clint said, as Bucky helped Steve struggle through the front door. They were the last to leave besides Natasha, who had managed to wrangle a sleepover, though of course she would reside on the couch.

Not that she would ever kiss Clint, not when she had the world already. Steve watched how Bucky pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek and squeezed her waist to say goodbye, just like George did to Winnie, and he felt sick all over again.

"That was a cool thing you came up with," Clint said. His hand was on Steve's shoulder, and there was something new in his expression, something Steve had never before seen directed at him. "Thanks."

"No problem," Steve said. "There's lots of fun things to do here. Just gotta look for them, yanno?"

Clint squeezed his shoulder again, and with that, Bucky led Steve down the path towards Winnie, who was waiting with peppermints and a plastic bag in the car.

"My poor boy," she said, sounding so much like Sarah but different at the same time. Steve took the peppermints gratefully, though of course he shared them with Bucky (under the line of Winnie's view though, because God forbid Bucky eat the sick boy's sweets).

They spent a lot more time at the Barton farm that summer. They rode go-karts and quad bikes, tried to catch the chickens, practiced being sheep-dogs, pretended they were pirates there to steal the animals ... There was no end to the games they could play. Even Tony, who didn't like the rough and tumble, enjoyed being the go-kart engineer, fixing up anything that went wrong and altering the brakes to ensure they could go as fast as possible.

The shine in Tony's eyes as he fixed something made Steve feel like he'd inhaled all the pollen in the world and his face was about to explode with it. It made him feel like he was in a tyre and it was going a hundred miles an hour and Bucky's hands were on his upper arms, squeezing him to the bone. It made him feel like he was watching Natasha go on tiptoes to kiss Bucky real hard, like there was something eating him up from the inside.

Steve almost thought about that. He almost thought about why Bucky and Tony made him feel like that when Clint and Jane and Reed Richards didn't. Maybe it was because those two were his best friends; he wouldn't know. Like he had said many times before, he didn't have much experience with friends, best or otherwise.

It so happened that one day, Steve and Bucky - with a little assistance from Reed and Tony - made a rope swing in the barn door like the one out of _Charlotte's Web_.            It so happened that you could fit two people at once  on it, and the extra weight made the swing much more perilous, so you felt as if you were going to go up up up and over the barn roof.

It so happened that one day, Steve got on the swing with Betty, and he had to put his arms around her stomach to keep them together. It so happened that she smelt good, like her clothes had just been washed in the laundry detergent that made Steve's eczema flare up, and it just so happened that her hair was all pulled back from her face so Steve could see nothing but her bangs and her glasses and her bright grey eyes.

Familiar eyes. Grey, but without a telltale hint of blue. Steve smiled at her, even though it might have wobbled.

"Hold on," he said, or at least he attempted to say. He couldn't get the words out. Betty Ross giggled, and Bucky pushed them off.

They were swinging through the air, the wind whipping on their faces, and Betty screamed and pressed herself against Steve even more so those grey eyes were hidden from view. Suddenly Steve was the protector - suddenly he was the one who someone relied on. He held her head on his chest and ran his fingers through her ponytail and she continued to scream, but lower, and out of delight more than anything.

When the swing began to slow down they did the usual, throwing themselves down into the hay-bale below. Betty landed right beside Steve and she was covering her face with laughing and Steve wanted more than anything to roll over and kiss her, right on the mouth.

It just so happened that the feeling he got in his stomach when he saw Tony with machines or Bucky being Bucky, that feeling that made him physically ill, he felt when he looked at Betty Ross.

That's when he realised.

He had a crush.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for constantly disappearing, but school is kicking my ass and boys are complicated and ugh.
> 
> The only good thing that has came out of me vanishing is that my inspiration has now been reignited full force, and chapters will definitely be coming faster and longer. We'll be moving into 7th grade now a.k.a. when all the shit goes down. Character introductions are done, you're settled into Leavenworth once more, now it's time to hit you with the feels.
> 
> Thanks again for being so patient and supportive and amazing. Every single comment encourages me to sit my ass down and write and I can't thank you enough for that. Forgive me for disappearing and trust that it will never be for long. I love these characters just as much as you guys do and I love this little town, so please bear with me!
> 
> Also, everything might hurt just a little bit more because haha I think I'm falling in love again oops and I don't know if he feels the same. So prepare for Stucky feels to fill the void!


	9. Chapter 9

Steve Rogers could deal with a crush.

It didn't even change him. On a day to day basis, he was the same person.

He sat in the same seat on the bus. He listened to the teachers with the same intensity and confusion as always. He focused just the same on homework. He laughed with Bucky and Tony and Reed like he always did. He rolled his eyes at Rumlow the exact same number of times before the day was out.

(Now it was time for the truth.)

It had changed him. On a day to day basis, he couldn't imagine being the same person again.

On the bus in the morning, he tried utterly desperately to change seats in order to maintain some kind of proximity to Betty Ross. He found himself drifting off in the middle of class, planning what he would say to her when he got out. He couldn't think about Pythagoras when she was sitting right there, thick fringe and thicker glasses, picking at the corner of her thumb nail. He couldn't bring himself to laugh, to speak, to joke; all he could think about was whether he had sounded dumb when he asked how her day had been. Even Rumlow did not get an eye roll, and when he made fun of the stupid smile on Steve's face, Steve barely heard when Bucky defended him.

Steve lay on Bucky's bed, the other boy's shoulder pressed tight against his. Bucky's room always, always smelt like laundry powder and vanilla because Winnie spent so much time cleaning it up, and her body spray was vanilla. Steve liked burying his face in the covers and taking in the sweet scent of Bucky's skin, liked figuring out exactly where he had laid the night before.

It wasn't weird.

Steve stared at the ceiling. Bucky's voice was a buzz in his ears; a constant, comforting presence as he discussed the latest theory he had learnt in physics. The annoyance that had built in Steve's stomach over the art class had since evaporated, and he was back to loving Bucky with all of his heart.

Well, at least the part of his heart that wasn't taken up by an impossible and unattainable crush on Betty Ross.

"You okay, Steve?"

Bucky's voice was as soft as the piano that played during church service on a Sunday morning, on the rare occasion when Steve and his Ma were both well enough to go. It rang out just the same, too, and Steve knew it so well he could trace its careful chorus, predict the chimes and drops in rhythm, could put his heartbeat into time with it.

"I'm swell, pal," he said, shrugging his shoulders. The gesture rucked up both of their t-shirts so the fabric was tight under their arms, but Bucky did not say a word, nor did Steve.

"You look deep in thought, buddy." There is was; the linger on buddy, the careful consideration, the pause beforehand that an older Steve would recognise as contemplation but which this younger Steve could only assume was hesitation. "You can talk to me, you know. Anything you say dies with me."

It was true. Although Bucky Barnes would appear on the surface to be an insatiable gossip, anything Steve had told him that was remotely personal had gone no further than the four walls of Bucky's bedroom. Bucky was good at keeping things in the bedroom.

Okay, that made it weird. Steve went bright red at the faux-pas, and Bucky took this to mean he could keep prodding.

"You like someone, don't you?"

Steve did not respond. Bucky pushed himself upright on the bed, and Steve grunted at the loss of contact.

"Who is it, Steve?" Bucky asked. "Come on, don't keep mum on me now."

If Steve said it out loud, he would jinx it. He would ruin it. Bucky would laugh; Steve barely talks to Betty, that's what he'd say. He wouldn't understand that not everyone was like him. Not everyone got to talk to their crush so easily, got to say whatever it was they wanted to say whenever they wanted to say it. Some people had to cherish the few sentences that were exchanged before the bus arrived in the morning; relish the small talk.

"Let me guess, okay? And you don't have to say anything. I'll know by your face."

It was true. Bucky was remarkable at knowing what Steve was thinking, at least most of the time. Sometimes he was completely wrong, like thinking Steve was looking at Natasha's ass rather than Tony's, but it worked for him, because Steve didn't want Bucky thinking he was gay or anything. At least not gay for Tony Stark, because that would just be embarrassing.

Tony had nice eyes. Bright brown. Bigger than the sun. Made Steve feel a little dizzy looking at them. Most times, their conversations ended with Tony deciding Reed was more interesting and Steve deciding Tony was a dick, but there were some times, those bigger times, that Steve wanted to stop him talking about physics by grabbing his face and thumping it against his own. Not even a kiss; something more than that.

He didn't like thinking about it. He preferred thinking about Betty Ross; it was more understandable, at least, even if it was equally as unlikely to actually happen.

"Natasha."

"W-"

"Don't say anything, remember? I know by your face it's not her, just wanted to test."

Steve pursed his lips together. He was about to say that Bucky was the one who wanted to get with Natasha and it made him feel physically sick for a reason he could not pinpoint, but he stopped short. As usual.

"Carol?"

Nope.

"Jess?"

Nope.

"Susan?"

Definitely not. Steve doubted she could speak.

"Jane?"

His best friend since birth. It would make sense, but it wasn't true.

Bucky's eyes suddenly widened in realisation. "Betty!" he exclaimed. "You like Betty Ross, don't you?"

The pause lasted a beat too long. "Thought I wasn't supposed to say anything," Steve said.

Bucky let out a groan. "Come on, Steve," he said. "If you like Betty, that's cool. I can talk to her if you want."

"Fuck no."

"Why not?"

"Because she'd just fall in love with you!"

(Except Steve said that in his head, so no one heard it but him.)

Steve crossed his arms against his chest. Bucky chuckled and flopped back onto the bed.

"Okay buddy," he said. His voice had not changed. "You can tell me stuff like that, you know. I'm not a complete asshole."

His voice had changed. Steve turned his head to look at his friend, but uncharacteristically, Bucky did not meet the challenge, or his eyes. Instead Bucky stared at the ceiling, his Adam's apple bobbing uncomfortably in his throat.

"Do you like Betty?" Steve asked tentatively. Bucky rolled his eyes and turned to look at Steve.

Normal. Not weird. Success.

"Course not," Bucky said. "Not if you like her, pal. I've got more than my fair share of girls; if you like someone, they must be pretty goddamn special, and you deserve that more than me."

Steve did not think that was true. He saw the way the teachers looked at Bucky, like they respected him, cherished his opinion even though he was as much of a kid as the rest of the students were. He saw how his own Ma considered Barnes, how she grabbed his shoulder affectionately as he walked past, how she asked Steve about him on a pretty consistent basis. He saw the love Clint and Natasha and _everyone_ looked at Bucky with.

Betty Ross was one of the best people Steve knew, but that was because she wasn't. She was snappy, and brash, and sometimes arrogant. Her father had a penchant for looking down his rather long nose, and since she had grown and developed more of her father's looks, she had taken on the same habit unwittingly. She thought she knew everything, all the time. She had this bravado about her that did not match with her outward appearance. People thought she was innocent, but really, she was - she was ...

She was a bitch, perhaps more so than Natasha Romanoff. She was uncool and her knees were always bloody and her dresses were always ripped. She bit her nails and pushed her glasses up more than was strictly necessary and she always cussed when she dropped things, and she dropped things a lot. She spoke in a very matter of fact voice and made everyone else, even Tony, feel stupid.

Steve liked that. He liked that she was unlike everyone else, that he could think about her, that he could speak about her and everyone automatically knew who he was referring to. She was an individual in every possible way, and she stood up for her friends when no one else did.

Maybe that's what drew Steve to her.

She was fiercely protective, even when people were only joking around. When Tony made fun of Jane's glasses, Betty threatened to tell everyone about the time Tony peed himself on the trip to the science labs he was so excited.

Things like that happened all the time. Betty was smart, and she was sharp and wicked and cruel, but she was loyal, and brave, and she stood up against teachers when they were wrong even if it got her a fair share of after-school detentions.

Steve wasn't sure how to put this into words, at least not in a way that would make sense to Bucky. It barely made sense to say it out loud to himself in front of the mirror, because he had tried enough times. He couldn't justify his attraction to Betty, not in the same way as he could justify his draw towards Tony Stark.

Bucky was very good at not continuing to ask questions, and so they fell into careful silence. An hour or so passed by, and Steve was about to ask if Bucky wanted to play Animal Crossing when Bucky's phone began buzzing on the bedside table.

Steve picked it up and passed it to Bucky. "It's Nat," he said. Bucky tried, and failed, to hide his smile, and pressed the answer button.

"Nat," he said, a grin on his face the size of his appeal. "I was just thinking about- wait what?"

The smile dropped off his face. Steve got a heavy feeling in the bottom of his stomach.

"What's wrong?" he whispered to Bucky, and Bucky waved him off with a hand, listening to Natasha intently.

"Seriously?" Bucky said. "Is your dad home? Well I didn't know that, did I? Does he want me to come over? You know he doesn't really like me ... No he hates me Nat, no doubt about it. I'm with Steve right now ... Shut the fuck up, alright. Me and Steve- okay, fine. Right, I'll be there in five."

He hung up decisively. Steve raised an eyebrow.

"You know the way Rumlow made fun of Natasha yesterday for being ginger?"

Steve nodded. It had spread around the school like wildfire. No one ever picked on Natasha Romanoff; it was pure stupidity. Her father was the headmaster and she was a trained assassin (probably).

"Well, the dumbass tried to dye her hair tonight and it has apparently gone horribly wrong, so instead of phoning Betty or Jane or someone she had phoned us, and she wants us to come around right now."

"Us?" Steve repeated. Bucky was already rooting around on the bedroom floor searching for shoes. "Does that actually mean us, or does it mean you?"

"What does it matter?" Bucky replied, answering Steve's question rather fluently. "You're coming with me, aren't you?"

"I don't know the first thing about hair dye."

"Well God, Rogers, neither do I," Bucky said, running his hands through his hair. His eyes caught on a pair of black Converse and he pulled them on. Steve did not mention the fact that they were his, and instead silently selected a pair of Bucky's shoes to test out. "That's why we need two of us, right?"

They ran all the way to Natasha's house. Mama Wilson peeked out from behind her curtains, and to anyone it must've seemed as if Natasha was lying dead in the front room from the way Bucky and Steve's feet pounded against the tarmac. Bucky started laughing as he ran, and Steve, chest burning and legs becoming heavy, did the same.

Everything became beautiful when he did it with Bucky. Running down a broken down street, smelling manure in the air, towards Natasha Romanoff's house, and Bucky's laugh made it all seem sparkling. Made it seem as if Steve was a partner in crime, like he was making things better just by being there.

Bucky was charismatic, magnetic, utterly unforgettable, and he was Steve's best friend. His best friend in the whole world.

When they arrived at Natasha's house, their faces were bright red and they were panting, but Nick Fury never even noticed. The look of worry on his face would've been funny if it wasn't so heartbreaking, and Steve flashed him a smile before following Bucky up the stairs.

There was an unspoken agreement between Nick Fury and Bucky Barnes. Nick Fury understood in a way that none of the children could that, in a few years time, Bucky would want nothing more than to get into his daughter's bed. Bucky understood, more than anyone in Leavenworth, how much Nick Fury desperately wanted to be the best father in the town. How he doubted every choice he ever made. How he kept things from Natasha because he wanted to protect her, but hurt her by doing so.

Bucky and Nick knew each other, and they did not trust each other, but they respected that both of them were important to Natasha, and so Nick allowed Bucky to continue hanging out with Nat and Bucky never spoke a bad word about Nick to Natasha or anyone else. Even when Nat complained about her father, Bucky defended him, sometimes to her displeasure.

Bucky seemed to know instinctively where Natasha was. His attachment to her was almost primal; he could smell her rose perfume from a distance, knew immediately where to be. He burst into the bathroom and Steve could see Natasha Romanoff sitting on the edge of the bath, her head in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking very, very gently.

Steve stayed on the landing.

"Hey, darling," Bucky said. He placed his hand deliberately, but casually so, on the underside of her chin. "It's not that bad, my love."

He spoke like Winnie when he was like this. When he was around her. When he was comforting people. Steve closed his eyes, mostly so he would not laugh at Natasha.

One side of her hair was orange, and the other was pitch black. That might've been easily enough fixed, but she had used permanent dye, and currently, the dye was all over one side of her face.

"I tried to wash it out," she screeched, "and it went all over my fucking face!"

Steve sat down on the carpet. It was covered in dust, because Nick Fury was not the domestic type. Everyone was still confused over why he had adopted the girl in the first place, at least until they saw how he looked at her with adoration.

The only crack in his icy exterior was his daughter, and right now, Steve was pretty sure Nick Fury was sitting in the living room, head in his hands, shoulders shaking. The picture of a concerned father.

It hit Steve then, where it hadn't in a while. The longing for a father, to know what it felt like, to know what it would be like to be looked at like you could do no wrong.

Then Bucky raised his head and glanced over at Steve, and the longing became a pang. In his grey-blue eyes - Steve still hadn't decided on the colour - there was pleading.

"Here, Nat," Steve said. He walked into the bathroom and took his hands out of his pockets, taking Natasha's head within them, forcing her to look up. Her makeup was lying thick on her face, caking in the pores and crevices as she wept, and it was almost pitiful, that hair dye could have such a reaction yet pushing a boy out of a jungle gym received only the briefest notion of fear. "Do you have soap and rubbing alcohol?"

She nodded.

"Tell me where it is, Nat," Steve said. She raised her hand miserably and pointed to the cupboard on the wall. Bucky grabbed the products and passed them over to Steve. "I need cotton wool too, buddy."

"What're you planning to do, exactly?" Nat asked.

"Don't question the master," Bucky replied. "Steve gets paint out of things all the time, don't you?"

"That's why you brought me then," Steve teased. "Here was me thinking it was my sparkling personality."

"I can have more than one reason for making you tag along with me, can't I?" Bucky said, a smirk hanging off his lips. Steve laughed a little and began mixing alcohol together with the soap in a soap-dish, making a little pool of hair dye remover. He dipped the cotton wool into it and began rubbing it over Natasha's face.

"If you wanted to go more emo," Steve mused as he worked, "you could've just put on thicker eyeliner."

"Don't give her any ideas," Bucky said. "If she put more eyeliner on she'd be at least 99% black."

"That's racist, James."

Steve and Bucky let out a whoop at the resurfacing of her humour, and a grin appeared on Nat's face.

"I hate both of you," she said.

"Get the dye off your own face next time then," Steve said, but they all knew he was joking.

Before Steve and Bucky left the Fury-Romanoff residence, Natasha pulled him to the side.

"If you want me to speak to Betty," she said, "I owe you one now."

"I don't like Betty," Steve replied. "Where'd you get that from?"

"Your face," Natasha said. "It's pretty obvious in class when you're nearly falling out of your chair looking at her."

Steve could feel his ears getting warm. Natasha smirked. The fact that he had seen her crying her eyes out two seconds ago was evidently forgotten, and she maintained her sense of superiority over him and his emotions.

"Seriously though. Think about it. She might like you too."

"Has she said anything?"

"No. But that's only because she barely knows you exist."

It was true. Steve thought about how true it was as he walked home. As he said goodbye to Bucky's parents and grabbed his stuff. As he crawled into his own bed, read the note that said his Ma would be back from work around midnight.

She had left her phone. Steve found himself calling Tony.

"Hey," he said.

"Hi. Why are you phoning me?"

"Can you talk?"

"Not really."

That meant yes.

"How are your parents?"

"Just peachy."

That meant he'd come in with another bruise on Monday. Steve felt sick.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"You think I'd be alive if I did?"

"He wouldn't do that."

"Yeah, I know. Wouldn't be stupid enough. Doesn't stop him from trying."

There was silence for a moment.

"Sometimes I wish he would."

"That's fucked up, Tony."

"Did I ask for your opinion, Rogers? You're the one who phoned me anyway."

"I wanted-"

"What?"

He wanted to understand why Tony could get under his skin in a way no one else - except maybe Betty, and definitely Bucky - did. He wanted to know that Tony would be okay, that his brown eyes would keep crinkling as he smiled, that he wouldn't stop pretending to be happy because his feelings were all that mattered to Steve some days.

He wanted to protect Tony. He wasn't sure why; they were friends, and friends cared for friends, but not this much. He could feel a physical pull in his stomach when he thought of him. He wanted to kill Howard Stark for doing this, wanted to shout at Maria for allowing it.

He wanted a lot of things, but all he said was:

"I wanted to get help with physics."

"At ten o'clock at night?"

"You always said you thought better at night."

"I say a lot of stupid stuff, Steve."

"Do you want to help or not?"

A brief pause. A rustle. Tony was in bed; probably in his silk pyjamas, probably put there by his nanny. Probably happy he'll be left in peace, even if he won't sleep.

"Okay," Tony said finally. "But I'll talk fast. Some of us have school in the morning, Steve."

-

The next day as they walked home from school, Bucky found a stray dog. It wasn't a particular type; Steve's Ma just called it a mutt. He wanted to keep it.

"No," Winnie said when they brought it home. "It'll eat Freud."

"Good," Bucky said. "No one likes Freud."

"We're not keeping the dog."

"But I named it."

"I don't care."

"I named it Stella."

"When you get your own house, you can get a dog."

"But we have a cat."

"Cats stay outside most of the time."

"Not really. Freud sleeps in Mary's bed most nights."

"Does he?"

"That doesn't matter, Mom. Please let me keep her."

"No."

Steve watched as Bucky crossed his arms and refused to move from his position on the kitchen tiles. Stella sat at his feet.

They stood like that for half an hour. Steve had to bring him a sandwich in the middle. It was rather impressive, by all accounts.

"Let him keep the fucking dog," George said when he got home from work. "Stupid thing will probably die within a year anyway."

Stella didn't die within a year.

Bucky Barnes was the happiest kid on the block that day, and Steve with him.

Bucky always championed the underdog. It made the pull towards him even stronger.

Steve never stood a chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up is the Summer of 2002, so prepare for their fortnight at camp, the hottest summer of their childhood, and a hell of a lot of disagreements. 
> 
> Yet again, so sorry for disappearing. Life has been very, very confusing lately. My formal was absolutely insane - a lot of things happened so I can't wait to write about them through Steve and Bucky - and the guy I thought I was in love with I don't know if he likes me but another guy does and I don't know what's happening. So there's that.
> 
> Thank you so much for your comments though! Writing takes my mind off of everything and helps me to understand what's happening, so I really appreciate your support and want you to know that if I didn't have you guys supporting me, this series would never get finished. So thanks again, and please leave kudos and comments! I love talking to my readers and really appreciate anything you have to say. xx


	10. Chapter 10

It was the summer of 2002, and Steve Rogers was lying under the Barnes' kitchen table scheming with Bucky.

"Two months," he groaned, pressing his face into the pillow.

It was stiflingly hot, so hot he could barely breathe, but that was the way he felt most times he was thinking about Betty Ross anyway, so he was used to it. A small sliver of sweat shone on Bucky's forehead, and as they both lay there in their white bedclothes, Steve could smell the sickly sweet scent of perspiration in the air. Stella lay at their feet, panting and licking her lips as if she could singlehandedly restore water to her system.

"Two months," Bucky hummed in agreement. He dealt with the heat better than Steve did; better than Steve could, with his asthma. Choking on his own breath was never particularly pleasurable, but nothing was worse than feeling the burn in the back of your throat while you did so. "She'll be begging to talk to you when we get back to school, just you wait."

Betty Ross was a rather complicated matter. In fact, she was the same level of complicated as Tony Stark had recently become. Where there was once long, ranting answers to Steve's questions, he was now met with silence from both of them, and he was utterly perplexed as to what he had done wrong.

Jane had made a comment to him on the last day of school that felt like a punch in the gut, or in the face, perhaps, for his face suddenly became paralysed into a smiling position.

"You know she talks about you all the time," she said, rather offhandedly, shrugging in the direction of her best friend, who was shoving a lot of books into her small locker.

"What?" Steve said. It was far too loud, and far too quick. Jane raised an eyebrow. Steve cleared his throat. "Oh, really?" he said. "What did she say?"

Jane blinked a few times. "I'm not saying," she said, and that was just the kicker.

She knew what it would do to Steve. Or maybe she didn't. Maybe she didn't quite realise the extent of time Steve spent thinking about Betty Ross, how one sentence from her could make his entire day or break it, how he over-thought every word that passed her sweet, red lips. Jane surely couldn't be so cruel if she knew Steve actually had a thing for Betty; it would be tantamount to torture, to make him think over and over again about what Betty possibly could've said.

"She probably just said you were funny," Natasha said when Steve screamed at her about it during lunch. She had been eating her cheese crackers and not really paying attention when Steve's face dropped.

Because yeah, it was cool if Betty thought he was funny, because he was a funny guy, when he wanted to be (he got most of his humour from Bucky and Tony though, and their peculiar styles mixed together made him just unique enough to garner some kind of chuckle). But what Steve really wanted Betty to say ... what he _needed her to say ..._ It was a completely different thing altogether.

He lay on his back under the Barnes' kitchen table and didn't flinch when Freud the cat walked straight over his face, putting a paw very, very close to his nostril and stepping deliberately on his mouth. Steve stared up at the patterns in the wooden underlay, breaking his gaze only to blink.

There were so many things Betty could've said to Jane, but all of them seemed pretty extraordinary. That Steve was funny. That he was cute? God forbid. That he was smart? He wasn't on Betty's level, but he wasn't stupid. That he had a lot of friends? True, for the first time in forever. That he was a good time? Maybe.

On the flip side, she could've said that he was annoying. That he watched her for two seconds after she stopped speaking and it was creeping her out. How she didn't like the way his hand lingered during biology practical when all he wanted was just a second of her time. That he was too skinny, or freckly, or that he burnt too easily, or that it freaked her out when he started wheezing when she spoke to him.

Bucky said it surely would've been a good thing. "Jane wouldn't have brought it up if it wasn't good," he said, ever the diplomat. "She's not a mean person."

But she was. Or she wasn't. Steve knew Jane in the vague way that most people knew their childhood friends; he always knew what she would wear to different occasions, what she would think about their new teacher, what she would gripe about under her breath. But he didn't really understand her morality. For him, she had always been there, making erratic decisions based on whatever took her fancy that day. It was hopeless pretending that she always had benevolent intentions.

"It could've been a bad thing," Steve mused. "She could've been taking the piss. Maybe Betty didn't say anything at all."

It was so hot. The heat hung thick above their noses. All the windows in the kitchens were open, and Winnie kept floating into the room, sweat pooling in the hollow of her chest-bone, imploring the boys to go outside.

"It's cooler outside," she protested. "There's a bit of a breeze."

But it was a lie, and they all knew it. Bucky's sisters also lay in the kitchen, right in front of the fan. They had hitched their dresses up and tied the bottoms of them into their belts, so that when Winnie saw them she tutted and grabbed the fabric, telling them to "act like ladies for once, girls, please." Their legs were bright white, but not yet as white as Steve's, and as the days went on and the sun got hotter they became browner and browner.

Steve mapped out the evolution of Bucky's skin colour using paints that George had got him from the market (he hadn't asked how much they had cost; figured if he did, he'd feel obligated to pay something towards it). It had gone from alabaster, the colour of his Ma's porcelain vase, the only expensive item in the house that had been passed on from Steve's grandmother on his Pa's side. It had gone alabaster, porcelain, beige, tan, chestnut.

"I do not look like a chestnut," Bucky spluttered. He had glanced over Steve's shoulder and squinted down at his sketchbook. For a long time, that had freaked Steve out. His sketchbook was his personal thing; the one thing he had away from his Ma and friends. But now, Bucky leaned all over him when he wanted to see, and Steve had never been good at telling Bucky to stop leaning all over him.

"Do too," Steve retorted. "Put some suncream on before you're a lobster."

But Bucky didn't need suncream. In the scorching New England sun he glistened with renewed vigour, whilst Steve, despite his factor 50, burnt to an inevitable crisp. The only indication that Bucky had not been born a chestnut colour was the light dusting of freckles that appeared on the contours of his cheekbones, just where the sun managed not to hit.

They sat in the Barnes' bathroom. It was a big room, bigger than Steve's bedroom, and there was a corner bath that the sisters always sat on when they were doing each other's hair. There was a fluffy towel hung over it "to stop us getting sore bee-hinds," and the fluffy towel was paler than Bucky's skin now, even though it was brown.

"That hurts, Buck," Steve said, but very quietly, so Bucky had to ask him to repeat it. "I said, hurry up Buck."

(Bucky liked picking the peeling skin off Steve's neck, off the top of his ears, off his back. It was a weird habit that Steve also kinda liked because it meant Bucky's cold hands were on his skin. Bucky's hands were always cold; even in that summer, the bitching summer where it was sweltering and Bucky's dog kept being sick with the heat.)

Bucky found one of his dad's knives in the garage. His dad always carried a knife; Swiss army ones, like the ones in movies, but sometimes he carried just a normal knife. Winnie said it was because he'd gone to school in a rough area of the city, and he hadn't managed to recover.

Steve didn't really get that. He wasn't in that city now; why did he still carry the fear around with him, glinting in the sunlight? How could George, a man who seemed braver than anybody, even Bucky, be scared sometimes of his own shadow?

It was kinda stupid if you asked him, but nobody ever did. Nobody ever talked about it, except for that one time, especially Bucky.

Bucky got the knife and waited until his sisters left to get lunch before he took it out from under his pyjama shirt. He propped himself up on all the pillows in their fort and started chipping away at the underneath of the wooden dining table.

Tony wasn't talking to Steve much anymore. They used to text quite a bit on Steve's Ma's phone. Steve always deleted the messages. Tony talked a lot at midnight, and they were always quite weird messages. They never made sense in the morning, but when Steve didn't have much sleep either they made sense.

**TONY:** _sometimes all inside me is static, like a tv screen_

**TONY:** _my dads the only one who fixes it_

**TONY:** _he tries really hard sometimes_

**TONY:** _i cant hate him_

Other times they weren't weird, they were just sad.

**TONY:** _why do i mess up everything_

**TONY:** _me and nat had a good thing going and i fucked up_

**TONY:** _why cant i understand what people are feeling_

**TONY:** _whats wrong with me_

Natasha and Tony started talking on the last day of school. Of course they had talked before then, at lunch and stuff and in class because they both took all advanced classes, but they'd hated each other for a long time, or so it seemed.

Tony was proper in love with her though. Tony was in love with a lot of people, apparently. He told Steve about it all the time, but he never told him about one person.

**TONY:** _yeah theres someone else but they dont like me that way_

**TONY:** _were too different_

**TONY:** _too good for me_

**TONY:** _kinda thick as well_

Natasha and Tony talked every day. They both had phones and rich parents, so they texted a lot. And they phoned too, for at least two hours before they went to bed. Tony sat outside Natasha's window.

Tony told Steve not to tell anyone, not even Bucky.

It was the only secret Steve ever kept, and he only did so because he saw how Natasha looked at Tony, like she was confused, but she was falling like he was for Betty, and he didn't want to ruin that by hurting Bucky's feelings, not when Bucky loved loved loved Natasha so much.

They talked every day until they didn't. Natasha stopped replying one night, and Tony stopped calling her.

"I'm not chasing after Natasha freaking Romanoff," Tony said to Steve as they blew heads off dandelions. "She stopped talking to me."

"I'm not calling Tony fucking Stark," Natasha said, ripping down her Nirvana posters. "He cared so much, he'd call me."

Steve didn't know what to say to either of them. He knew if he said even one sentence, it would be resolved. They would start talking again.

For some reason, he never said that one sentence.

Tony and Natasha never spoke outside of school again, not until years later (but that's a different story, one a ten year old Steve could never imagine).

Steve looked up from his book. It was a nice book about two boys who were best friends and drew pictures that came to life. It sounded like a kid's book but it wasn't, because it came from Winnie's personal library she had stocked under the kitchen sink.

Bucky had carved their names and the year into the table. Steve grinned at him with all his teeth. Bucky smiled back.

It was magic.

It was almost worth Winnie screaming at both of them.

Being friends with Bucky - seeing that smile - was always worth it.

Tony and Natasha didn't speak again. Soon, Tony stopped messaging Steve late at night as well.

(Steve found he couldn't get to sleep quite as easily without Tony's incessant beeping, without his constant reassurance, without his eagerness and his aloof nature and his asshole tendencies.)

Steve messaged Tony, once.

**STEVE:** _Hey._

**STEVE:** _Are you ok?_

He got no reply.

Steve Rogers missed Tony Stark. He talked to him just in school, and when all their friends were together that summer, but never alone. Never like they used to.

Tony didn't meet his eye much that summer either. Maybe it was the heat; it made everyone a little crazy.

"This has been a bitching summer," Bucky said, only two weeks in, just before they packed their bags to go to camp. The heat had somewhat dissipated; Steve could once again breathe. They would all be together for two weeks in a cramped little cabin with fun team bonding experiences. It was destined to be a disaster.

"Yeah," Steve said. He looked over at Tony and Natasha, who would not look at each other. He saw how she chewed very deliberately on her chewing gum, how her gaze lingered a bit too long on Clint Barton instead of Tony.

Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff never would have worked.

Tony Stark and Steve Rogers never would have been friends if they hadn't met that day under the bleachers.

Some things weren't meant to be.

Didn't mean Steve Rogers didn't miss Tony Stark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I'm a piece of trash and I'm sorry.  
> But I mean it this time when I say I will be back updating more and more regularly because goddamnit I need Leavenworth right now.  
> This past month has been insane for me. I've got my heart broken, my best friend got a boyfriend, and my dad was in hospital. It's been hectic, but this month will be different because  
> There's this guy. Not the guy who broke my heart, someone else. And maybe I lost my inspiration for a bit, but this guy might just bring it back. And it's kinda funny because his name is the same as one of the characters in this fic, so writing with his name just puts a smile on my face.  
> So I'm back. And I'm sorry to everyone who has supported me that I haven't been updating as much as usual. But I am back, and I need you guys and your support more than ever now.  
> Please leave comments and kudos. The comments don't even have to be about the fic, though that is of course appreciated so much! Just chatting to you guys about life makes my day.
> 
> Thanks again for sticking with me. I will get back into it. Losing my Tony has taken its toll, but I might just have found my Bucky. Guess that's all that matters.


	11. Chapter 11

The second week in June 2002, the second week of hell on earth, everyone piled onto a bus destined for the adventure camp they’d been saving for years to attend. Sarah in particular had been working extra shifts, because even she knew it was a rite of passage for the children in Leavenworth that no amount of poverty could prevent from occurring, and even Steve, with all his manifestations of guilt, could not turn down his mother’s offerings to pay his way to the camp.

“All I’m saying,” Tony said, turned at a three-hundred and sixty-degree angle in his seat, “is that Steve _clearly_ isn’t going to be tall enough for the zip rope.”

“You’re just bitter he sat beside Barnes instead,” Jane supplemented, as the long-suffering Natasha Romanoff slammed her head against the bus window. Tony made a sound in the back of his throat that was halfway between a growl and an affirmation, and Steve felt that uncomfortable feeling in his stomach again.

He didn’t regret sitting beside Bucky. In fact, it was probably the best decision of his relatively short life at that point. The seat beside Bucky was one of immunity. His entire school career, Steve had dreaded trips, especially trips where they would be piled into a bus for hours on end. The stifling conditions, the dust in the air and the lack of leg room meant that the other kids soon got bored, and when they got bored, it never ended well for Steve. Usually one of them would turn around to him, say something scathing and then turn back to cackle briefly with their friends, forgetting all about how they made him start crying in the back of the vehicle.

The words, some of which had come from Bucky and his crew themselves, still stung when Steve thought about them, still chewed away at his mind, at every inch of him. Descriptions of him as a weirdo, someone no one but the teachers would want to sit beside, a skinny freak, a nerd. They all chipped away at him bit by bit, and the more time Steve spent with Clint and Bucky and Natasha, the more he realised that these words, these phrases that had cut so deeply, were nothing more than momentary amusements for them.

He wasn’t sure if it was worse or better that they didn’t remember how they had tormented him. He wasn’t sure if it was worse or better that now he was no longer the target of their words, he could stay quiet and bite at the edge of his thumbnail when they lightly teased their quieter classmates, particularly Booger Wilson. Steve wasn’t the type of guy to stay silent when someone was hurting, but he was in the seat of immunity. He wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t going to give that seat up so easily.

Barely anyone was mean to him anymore, now that he sat beside Bucky Barnes. After years – at least twelve – of torment, it was a nice change. Even his father, the bravest man in the world, Joseph Rogers, soldier and husband of Sarah, had only been at war for three years before he died. Steve would like to see how good a man he was after more than a decade.

“You’ll be tall enough,” Bucky said, leaning over just a little to mutter into Steve’s ear. His voice was so low that the comfort was almost circumvented by the lengths he went to hide it, but he smelt a little like pinecones from the forest they’d been playing in while they waited for the bus, and his hair had fallen over his eyes in the way that made him look a bit like Indiana Jones, and Steve wasn’t much for arguing with him, anyway. “Don’t listen to Stark. He’s just pissed that he’s a munchkin.”

“Or an Oompa Loompa,” Steve commented, and Bucky burst into laughter, making Steve’s cheeks go pleasantly pink and prompting many questions from their surrounding classmates on what Steve could say to garner such a reaction. Bucky just shook his head and said that it was an inside joke, and Steve’s stomach flipped over on itself and turned into a paper fortune teller, turning in and out with each word Bucky spoke.

Tony had settled back into his seat. Steve knew him well enough that the back of his head looked like a pout – and sure enough, reflected in the driver’s rearview mirror, Tony’s face was a picture of distaste.

Steve wanted to be irritated by that. He wanted to be pissed off, wanted to turn to Bucky and make fun of how Tony always seemed to be pouting at one thing or another, especially lately. Reed was the only one who managed to get a smile out of him, or James Rhodes, who seemed to tag along with him more than usual since Steve had extricated himself, stitched to Bucky’s side.

Instead, he looked at Tony and he felt a deep, overwhelming sense of _guilt._ He should be the one sitting next to Tony; he shouldn’t have _deserted_ him. Steve had made friends with the cool kids, and although Tony sat at their table, he still preferred robots to people. He wasn’t as much of the group as Steve was, as strange as that was a conclusion to come to. Bucky was a people person; he could make a friend in an empty room. If Steve went to sit beside Tony, Bucky would have had millions of people running to take the seat beside him. With Steve’s choice to sit with Bucky, Tony was alone – no, not alone, but as good as.

Tony Stark was sitting next to Coma Girl. That was what everyone called her, because in fourth grade her parents had been in a car accident and her little brother had been squished between their car and a semi-truck, apparently. Steve read it in the paper. Four people went out, a family, and three of them were squished, like pancakes, and one of them, a girl that he thought was called Janice or Jeannie or Jessica, something with a J, left school and went to the hospital instead for a couple of months where she just slept and slept and slept.

When she returned to school, she basically stuck to her sister Trish, who had a name that no one forgot but lately seemed to have really red eyes and bruised arms. As the years drew on, Coma Girl found herself beside Big Cage, who always won at basketball because he was the tallest and who joined the wrestling team as soon as they went to middle school, and he always won because he was the strongest. Now, though, Big Cage was at home because his mama couldn’t afford to send him on the trip, and Coma Girl’s sister was on the other bus because they had different surnames, which was weird, but it was because Coma Girl was adopted, apparently.

Coma Girl was sitting next to Tony Stark. She had really dark hair, as dark as Tony’s was when it was greasy and pressed to his head, and it went down all over her face. She was wearing headphones, and even from several rows back Steve could hear Metallica blasting into her ears at a volume that definitely would deafen her by the end of the trip. Tony’s foot was tapping insistently against the floor, his fingers rapping on his thigh, and most people would have been pissed off by that, and Coma Girl wasn’t well known for being the most patient of people, but she was too busy listening to her Metallica, too busy popping bubblegum obnoxiously loud and texting her sister at the same time, who was only an hour away.

Bucky and Clint and Nat were very funny the whole way, pointing out cars that looked weird and people that looked weirder, and they put on accents and quoted movies and bounced off each other in a way only people who had known each other for years could manage, but Steve found it hard to concentrate on them. Every few minutes he looked away from Bucky and towards Tony, seeing how quiet he was, how the lack of conversation, even towards his robots, was making him tap more and more insistently, how Coma Girl’s music got louder and louder with each passing minute until eventually, with a sharp twist of events, she popped them out and dropped the earphones onto her lap.

“Why are you tapping?” she asked Tony. Her voice, from what Steve could hear amidst Clint’s mutterings, was higher than he was expecting. Softer, too. He had heard it before, but it was screaming across the hallway. Sometimes Coma Girl saw her parents and little brother being squashed all over again, Steve’s ma explained. Sometimes that was why she stopped in the middle of the hall and grabbed her head and dropped to the ground and just. Kept. Screaming.

When she did scream, everyone laughed, but Steve didn’t. (Bucky didn’t either, and Nat just got uncomfortable, scuttled off towards the bathroom.) Steve _couldn’t_ laugh, couldn’t even comment. He heard her screaming and her voice was like sandpaper, and for days afterwards the teachers didn’t ask her any questions in class because they knew that it felt like knives in her throat to speak.

Clint was angry about that. “How come she gets away with not answering and we don’t?” he asked. Nat tried to explain, but she got cut off by Clint walking away, or seeing someone across the crowd, or suddenly getting that far off look on his face that he sometimes got when Steve knew he was thinking about his brother.

Tony never got angry about it. Come to think of it, he didn’t laugh when she screamed either. Tony always nodded at Trish Walker when she moved past him in the hall. Steve wondered if that was another person Tony was in love with, but when he asked, when he grew the nerve to spit a string of words towards the guy he used to know inside and out, Tony had shaken his head and said, “It’s not like that. It’s just not. Leave it, would you?”

Steve glanced through the gap in the seats. Bucky narrowed his eyebrows at him, opened his mouth to ask what he was doing, but then Nat said something about a football player that irritated him and Bucky spun around to snap at her about defence positions or something.

Tony looked up at Coma Girl. “What?” he asked, even though Tony was many things, but deaf he wasn’t. That was Clint, although they didn’t talk about how sometimes Clint would look at Steve or the others with a blank expression, or furrow his eyebrows as he followed their lips.

“You heard me,” Coma Girl replied, looking thoroughly unimpressed. “Why do you keep tapping?”

“Sorry,” Tony said immediately. “I’ll stop.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t give a shit if you tap. Just tell me _why._ ”

Coma Girl swore a lot, even more than Clint. It made Big Cage purse his lips together, but sometimes it made him ruffle her hair, too. It was strange, yet Steve understood that particular kind of affection more now – the kind that made it impossible to keep your hands away for longer than a few moments.

(Betty Ross’ hair swung behind her as she laughed, three rows back from the front. Steve’s stomach assaulted him, like he’d eaten some bad coleslaw.)

Tony didn’t answer Coma Girl’s question. Steve didn’t think he would have. Instead, Steve saw the faint outline of a shrug, at least what wasn’t concealed by the back of the seat. “Is that Metallica?” Tony asked, even as the screaming and beats were impossible not to distinguish at the volume Coma Girl played it.

“Yeah. So what?” she replied.

“I like Metallica.”

Coma Girl paused. Her hand went to the earphones. Steve noticed that her nail polish, black of course, was chipped from biting. Maybe she wasn’t as cool as she portrayed. Maybe she dealt in other ways besides screaming. It seemed strange, in a way that Steve _didn’t_ understand, but Tony did, clearly.

Tony reached for the earphones at the same time, and their hands brushed. “ _Enter Sandman_ is the best,” Tony said simply.

“You’re fuckin’ wrong,” Coma Girl snapped, but the tell-tale strains of Tony’s recommendation came blasting through the earphones. “Here,” she said. One went into Tony’s ear, the other went into hers, and they lapsed into silence once more.

(Coma Girl flexed her hand, though, the one that had touched Tony’s. Steve didn’t need to see it to know Tony did the same thing.)

-

They arrived at camp. They went to their rooms and unpacked their possessions. Bucky had a very large suitcase; Clint could fit into it, and Nat could fit into it too if they tangled their legs up and put their faces very close, and when they came out, Clint was very red and he played a little with his pants and then went back to his room. Steve had a very small suitcase, just one of his ma’s old leather messenger bags that had patches where the leather broke, and all he had was a few pairs of ratty pyjamas and a toothbrush. He even had to borrow Bucky’s towels.

“Ma has a lot to think about,” Steve said, when he found that he had to take some of Bucky’s toothpaste. Bucky nodded. He didn’t say anything else – Tony would have, but Bucky didn’t. Steve wasn’t sure which was better, or which was worse.

Steve was in a room with Bucky, Clint and Booger. Steve got the top bunk because Bucky didn’t like heights – but that was a lie, because when it came to the zipwire, Bucky was the first one off the tower, and he didn’t even scream as he went down through the trees at the speed of light, just let out a whoop and a cheer and made everyone else want to be as cool as him. Clint got the top bunk, and Booger was on the bottom, purely because Clint enjoyed thumping the mattress, depositing dust all over Booger while he slept, or stayed awake, because Steve didn’t think anyone who wasn’t in their group would sleep with Clint Barton in the room.

Booger woke up three days out of the week with shaving foam all over his face, or hair removal cream in one of his eyebrows, so he had a weird bald streak through it when he washed his face the next day. Clint put bleach on the faint moustache hairs that were growing, and when Booger wiped at his face, there was a large patch of pale amongst the dark brown of his skin, and Steve was almost sure he heard crying in the bathroom.

Despite this, Booger never once said a word to Clint. Not a swear or a plead or an acknowledgement or anything that had occurred. The other four days Steve stayed awake until Clint was snoring, because Clint knew better than to attempt anything when Steve was there, threatening to wake Booger before Clint could do his pranks. Bucky was very quiet about the whole thing – Steve wasn’t sure if it was because he cared about Clint, or because he didn’t give a shit about Booger.

On the third day of camp, the class get brought out to the lawn before bed and are subject to a ‘very serious’ talk from Ms. Grey and Mr. Summers, which they’d take more seriously if Mr. Summers didn’t spend most of the talk looking at Ms. Grey as if she’d hung the damn sun, just for rattling off health and safety measures.

“I’m sure you’ve all heard about what transpired today,” she said.

Clint put his hand up. “What does transpired mean?”

“Occurred,” Ms. Grey replied fluently. A general murmur of assent came from the children.

James Rhodes put his hand up. “What does occurred mean?”

“Happened,” she explained. “It’s another word for-”

Jane put up her hand. “What does happened mean?”

Ms. Grey, with all of the patience of an irate educator, began to yell. Her serious talk devolved into a rant, which at least meant that Steve could tune out and instead mumble to Bucky about what had gone down that day.

Natasha Romanoff had, for all intents and purposes, castrated a man, in a series of events that would no doubt go down in Leavenworth Middle School history.

“Relax, sweetheart,” the park ranger had said as Natasha stood at the top of the zipwire. She was strapped in securely, and was mere moments from plunging over the side into the forest. Her hands were sweaty; Steve knew because she had held Bucky’s hand before she got on and then Steve brushed against his, in the way that they always seemed to, and Bucky had wiped his hand on his pants and Steve had been forced to do the same.

Natasha looked over at the man. Steve knew she wasn’t scared, because Natasha Romanoff wasn’t scared of anything, but her palms were sweaty because they always kinda were. It was the one thing that wasn’t gorgeous about her, besides the spot on the very end of her nose that she had attempted to cover with makeup but had only served to draw more attention to it.

She looked over at the man. “I know it’s hard for girls to do stuff like this,” he said, a stupid smirk on his face. Nat’s look of fear? Apprehension? Nervousness? None of them seemed right, but the look on her face disappeared, replaced with the most stoic expression Steve had seen on anyone’s face, like the expression the nurses wore in the hospital when someone died and they went to the room to pay their respects.

“You’re right,” Natasha said, loud enough that the entire group waiting to go next could hear her. “It is hard for girls. Do you mind showing me first?”

The ranger furrowed his eyebrows together. “You want _me_ to do it?” Natasha nodded. “That’s highly unusual, Natalie, but I can-”

“Please?” Natasha said, but her voice was too sharp to be pleading – probably because of the mistaken name. “I want to see someone else do it before I do.”

The man conceded, because men always conceded to Natasha Romanoff, even when she was a kid – just for different reasons. “Alright,” he said. “I just need your help strapping up, okay?”

Nat nodded, and the man got to work, doing the majority of the strapping himself – but when he passed the rope over to Nat, she pulled it with a force that immediately cut straight to the guy’s crotch. “Holy sh-” he said, but caught himself just in time as the ropes tangled themselves at the top of his thighs. “It’s okay, it’s alright, just before I take off I loosen these-”

He was halfway through talking when Natasha Romanoff stepped forward, a glint in her eyes that was more dangerous than any wild beast, and pushed him off the zipwire tower with the singleminded determination of a murderess.

Miss Frost stepped forward. “Natasha!” she called out, but the man was gone, and he was spinning down into the forest on the zipwire, the rope around him becoming tighter and tighter with the tension, and that was how Natasha Romanoff physically almost castrated a park ranger, and why they were all now subjected to continued health and safety messages.

The good thing that came out of it was that Natasha, with a pure look of satisfaction on her face and a confidence in her high shoulders that seemed comfortable there, became much closer to the girls in the group. Jane and Betty took turns to fist bump her, even Coma Girl nodded in approval, and for all intents and purposes, she was the hero of the girls of Leavenworth Middle School – and maybe Clint’s hero too, for when she pushed the man off, his eyes grew to the size of plates and Steve could physically hear his heart beating him his position beside Bucky.

When the talk was over, they went to bed. Bucky did not join them. When Clint noticed the empty bed, he blinked at Steve in the diminishing light.

“Where’s Barnes?” he asked, tilting his head towards the bed. Steve shrugged.

“Probably with Nat,” he replied, as nonchalantly as he possibly could, considering how the words stuck in his throat.

Clint looked as if Steve had just castrated him, tied a rope around his balls and pushed him off a tower. “Oh,” he said simply.

“Yeah.”

“He’ll be back soon then.”

Boys weren’t allowed to be in girls’ cabins after dark. “Probably,” Steve said.

It wasn’t the overwhelming response Clint wanted, clearly, because he got into bed fully clothed and pulled the covers up over his head and let out a muffled scream.

Steve met Booger’s eyes in the darkness, just in time to see him rolling them. He stifled a laugh with his hand.

-

The camp outside Leavenworth was a let-down, really. The entire school talked a big game, and would definitely ham it up when they returned to middle school for the little ones who hadn’t managed to go, make it seem like it was this great soul searching adventure park that everyone had an amazing time at, but honestly, the popular kids were just travel-sick and the nerdy kids were living in a perpetual state of fear at the popular kids, who were even grumpier when they were bored and homesick and felt like they were going to throw up.

A perfect example of this was the final day of camp, where Clint was basically falling asleep in his salad, Natasha was poking at some greasy lasagne, and Steve and Bucky were occupying themselves with thumb wars. The food, other than the atmosphere, was the worst part about the camp. “I’d actually rather eat one of Clint’s socks,” Natasha said, pushing her plate away from her. Clint nodded sleepily, flinging a leg over her lap as he reclined on his chair.

“Same here, babe,” he said, and Natasha went pleasantly pink, and Bucky broke his plastic fork.

Steve raised an eyebrow at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” Bucky snapped. He pushed himself up out of his chair in one deft movement, ready to go over and grab a metal fork this time, something he couldn’t break when the green eyed monster appeared, when a loud voice echoed through the hall.

“You call _these_ fish fingers?” an incredulous voice exclaimed. “They’re filled with vegetables!”

“They are vegetarian fish fingers, kid,” the canteen worker replied, her wide grey eyebrows sitting like caterpillars on her forehead.

The kid – which everyone by now had identified as Booger Wilson – began to splutter in a way that would make Tony Stark jealous. “ _Vegetarian_ fish fingers?” he repeated. Clearly, he was so determined to prove his point that he didn’t even notice that the rest of the students had lapsed into silence, looking at him with wide eyes. “That makes no sense! Just call them vegetable fingers! Putting fish in the title is misleading and it means I have to actually taste peas in my mouth which are just, quite frankly, disgusting, and I don’t like this at all, and I need to have a serious-”

“Yo, Wilson!”

Bucky’s voice echoed through the hall. “Bucky, sit down,” Steve hissed, grabbing the end of Bucky’s sleeve, but the older boy shrugged it off.

Booger froze in place. It allowed the others in the line to move forward, at least, and they began to file around him.

“Look at Wilson,” Bucky jeered. “Getting pissed off at something, Booger?”

Steve immediately regretted reminding Bucky of that nickname. Booger didn’t even turn around. He just stayed there, very quiet, and eventually the lack of response meant that Bucky got bored and sat down again.

“You’re such a dickhead, Barnes,” Natasha informed him when he sat down. With purpose, she grabbed her tray filled with sad lasagne, pushed Clint’s feet off her lap and went over to Booger’s table. Booger didn’t meet her eyes, and just continued to stare at his sad fish fingers. “Is this seat taken?” she asked, jolting her tray towards it. Booger did not respond, so Nat dropped the tray down and sat beside him.

Booger didn’t even flinch. Clint dragged himself up and went to join Nat. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said to his best friend as he resumed his rightful position at her side, “but I’m in.”

Gradually, the entire table went over to sit beside Booger, who seemed more and more suspicious of the fact that this could be an elaborate scheme with each passing minute. Eventually, it was only Steve and Bucky at the table, and Bucky was clasping a juice carton very tightly in his hand, and Steve’s stomach felt like static.

Now he understood what Tony meant, about that. That his stomach could recognise when something was wrong, when he needed to change what he was doing. Steve turned to Bucky.

“I’m going too,” he informed him. Bucky let out a short, bitter laugh.

“Of course you are,” he retorted. “Go on ahead, hero. I’ll be here.”

“Don’t be such a baby. Come on.”

“Come on? Come on, let’s sit with Booger and pretend we give a shit about him?” Bucky chewed at the corner of his thumbnail. “No,” he said, with wavering certainty, “I’m staying here.”

It was, in retrospect, hypocritical of Clint, who was responsible for the lack of left eyebrow Booger was currently sprouting, to go and sit with him in a show of solidarity. Still, at least he was doing _something._ The reason for why he was doing it was, in Steve’s opinion at that very moment, irrelevant. It would matter when they got home, when they were sitting around haystacks in the barn and Steve was able to say what he really thought to Clint and Natasha and to everyone, something that was afforded to him now that they were friends and they were on equal footing, but it didn’t matter now.

Steve took the last seat at Booger’s table, right beside the guy. “Hey,” he said to him the moment he sat down. This time, Booger looked up. He met Steve’s eyes through his wireframed glasses, and a grin came onto his face. There was a little gap between his two front teeth, and Steve found himself grinning back.

The second he did, one of Bucky’s hands was on his shoulder, the familiar curve of his fingers, and the other was on Booger’s.

“Come on, idiots,” Bucky said, a smirk curling up on his lips. “We need to end this fish finger fiasco.”

-

Steve was on Booger’s left. Bucky was on Booger’s right. Booger was pretending, to no great avail, to hide his pleasure at this development. They waited until the canteen staff went for their smoke break, and then they parkoured over the counter and took the fish fingers – or the masquerades for fish fingers – shoving them in Steve’s messenger bag. (His ma would barely notice the grease. After all, it was dirty enough to begin with.)

They ran outside. The canteen staff yelled after them; the other students cheered. They ran until they couldn’t breathe anymore, until Bucky pulled them both into a bush and allowed Steve to get his breath back, to pull the inhaler from his pocket and take a few quick gulps. Booger leaned back on the grass, and they listened as the teachers walked, oblivious, past their hiding spot.

Once they were in the clear, they found a small patch of land, a few pieces of wood, and a couple stones. Booger used to be in the Boy Scouts, so he constructed a fire with practiced efficiency, which made Bucky look at him with appreciation and whack him on the back. “Good job, Booger,” he said.

“Sam,” Booger replied.

“Sam,” Bucky said. “Sam,” Steve repeated.

Steve emptied the messenger bag, allowing the fish fingers to fall onto the fire. The peas, carrots and various other vegetables inside of them went into flames almost immediately.

“You know what this makes us?” Bucky asked.

“Idiots?” Sam offered.

“In trouble?” Steve suggested.

Bucky shook his head, a grin coming onto his face like a slowly developing picture. “A Prank Squad.”

It was the beginning of the end. Sam looked terrified. Steve swung his arm around the other boy’s shoulders, and grabbed Bucky in that hug too.

“A squad,” he repeated.

Sam looked pleased, and didn’t even attempt to hide it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I re-emerge from the shadows .... Here's one of my longer chapters! There will be about two long chapters and one short one before we move into high school, which will be my absolute favourite thing to do. I'm hoping to do a lot more writing today, maybe even get middle school finished up, so that I can focus more this week on high school which will be amazing! Thank you for everyone who kept up with me, and everyone who inspired me with your comments, and please keep them coming!


	12. Chapter 12

“Go on, Stevie,” Bucky said. His hand hit against Steve’s back. “Blow out your candles.”

The day before the group left to go to camp – the second week in June, 2002, the second week of hell on earth – everyone piled into Natasha Romanoff’s house with party games and enthusiasm.

“Wanna play Spin The Bottle?” Clint asked, wiggling his eyebrows. Nat flicked him hard on his upper arm, and he let out a yelp, but no one said no.

(Steve really wanted to say no, but then he met Betty’s eyes across the circle, and he wanted to kiss her more than anything.)

George told Steve about the army as they sat at the table, eating breakfast. There was more syrup on the plate than waffles, and when Steve ate them, the sugar coated the back of his throat and stopped him coughing for a few minutes. Winnie had tension on her shoulders every time he did, shared a glance with her husband when he didn’t, and he hated when people treated him like he was made of glass. He hated it more than he could put into words. Maybe that was why he was happy that Bucky kept looking at Natasha like that – it stopped him worrying, anyway.

“Oh, how convenient!” Sam exclaimed with a laugh. “Clint’s bottle landed on Nat. You’re a dirty rotten cheat, Barton, that’s what you are-”

George said that the army felt like one big family. “We never had food like that out there,” he explained, “but we had what did us. When we came home, the first thing I saw was a McDonald’s sign, and I damn near cried. You learn to appreciate what you have.”

He squeezed Winnie’s hand, and Bucky grinned so bright he could rival the sun, and Steve didn’t feel like pointing out, even in his own mind, that George very rarely appreciated anything. He won $50 betting on the horses, and spent it all, and then more, chasing a larger prize. He had Winnie, who was so utterly beautiful and such a hard worker, yet he still rolled into motels outside Leavenworth with other women. Rumlow said he’d seen him – said his ma had seen George too, ducking in with women in red trench coats and stiletto heels, and Bucky hadn’t even punched him, Steve had to. Bucky had just stood there clenching and unclenching his fist, and he’d gone very grey and very quiet.

George didn’t appreciate anything, but he appreciated the army. He talked about it like he talked about his wife, sometimes, looked at the old pictures with the fondest of a thousand mothers gazing upon their son’s face.

“Tony’s making out with Clint!”

“Jesus Christ, my eyes.”

Steve’s ma didn’t talk about the army like that. She focused on the grenade, on the way his father had gone splat on the sand. She didn’t focus on the other smiling men in the photograph; she only commented on how the majority of them were dead.

“You’re not a half bad kisser, Stark.”

“Same to you, Barnes.”

Steve wanted to feel that sense of family. He wanted to have someone willing to lay on the line for him, willing to call him a hero when the time called for it. He wanted to be big, and strong – he wasn’t as skinny as he used to be, was filling out a little bit as he grew. He towered over Sarah now, not that it would be difficult, given how curled in on herself she was now, every time she coughed.

Speaking of coughing, Steve was doing a lot of it. It kinda went away while he was at camp, but that was because he sucked on hard candies and shoved subpar food in his mouth every time it threatened to choke him. If he woke up some mornings and there was a red stain on his pillow, he just flipped it over to the other side and hoped the maids wouldn’t say anything about it.

“Hey, Steve, Nat’s pretty hot, isn’t she?”

“Dunno. Hadn’t noticed.”

He was gonna be a soldier when he grew up. He was going to have that smile on his face when he talked about something like George did. He was going to wear a uniform and protect his country, and he was going to come home a hero, and he was going to make his da proud.

They played Spin The Bottle, and Steve skipped his go any time he could. Eventually, it got to the stage where Nat was literally going to force him to spin the water bottle, and so he did, thinking that this wasn’t really the way the game was meant to be played.

He hadn’t been paying attention to the game before then. The bottle span around and around on the floor like a spinning top. It kept going until it blurred in his eyes, and then it stopped, almost suddenly, in front of Bucky.

The room became a tunnel. Bucky’s eyes were grey – or blue. Steve hadn’t yet decided. Either way, he felt like he was going to be sick.

“Come on, Stevie,” Bucky said, a smirk on his face just like he’d had before he pressed his mouth to Tony’s, and that image was going to stay in Steve’s mind forever, he was never going to be able to leave it in the past – and he was just the same as Stark, just another passing phase in a game.

Bucky crawled through the circle until he was in front of Steve, and he was looking down at Steve’s mouth, and it was awkward and weird, and Steve pushed him away.

“I don’t want to play your stupid game, Buck,” he snapped, and he stormed up the stairs, and he flopped himself face down on Natasha’s bed and waited until Clint wandered upstairs and patted him on the back in what he supposed was meant to be a comforting manner.

It was Steve’s thirteenth birthday, and he was looking at his mother instead of looking at Bucky, because the sight of his best friend just reminded him of how Bucky had made fun of Sam in the canteen, or how he had looked down at his lips, and he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t meet those grey eyes – definitely grey, no void of colour in them – and not want to be sick.

He held back the cough. It ticked at the back of his throat with a fierce insistency, as if it was burning at the back of his mouth.

Natasha Romanoff was in the corner. She was the only one there besides Bucky and his ma. Everyone else was off celebrating the fourth of July, or not talking to him, because Tony and him … they were weird, and Steve didn’t know how to make it better.

“It’s okay, darling,” his ma said, holding up the camera. “I’m recording.”

Steve took a deep breath, and looked at the thirteen candles that were flickering in front of his face. He exhaled, trying to stop the cough from overtaking him, but midway through he felt himself double over.

There was a tissue pressed against his mouth, and Steve wanted to say thanks but he also wanted to pull it away from him, because he couldn’t _breathe,_ he could feel his ribcage protesting and his heart was pounding hard and thick and fast in his throat, and Steve was going to be sick, there was a metallic taste on his tongue …

“Steve, honey, are you alright?”

Steve looked down at the tissue. It was coated in dark red. It was a murder scene, like the ones him and Bucky played out when they were cops and robbers.

“Ma,” Steve said, the words threatening to choke him, “I think I’m gonna faint.”

The last thing he heard was Bucky screaming his name. When he woke up, he was in hospital, and Bucky was at his bedside, a magazine against his chest – no, not a magazine, a comic book.

Steve reached up. There was an oxygen mask over his face. He could hear his ma’s voice outside, talking away to the nurses. Tuberculosis. It was back. He was too sick to get the vaccine – his ma was the same.

His eyes opened, shut, opened and shut. He couldn’t stay awake for long, but Bucky seemed to sense his presence, and he was always the stronger of them. His eyes were so blue, so bright and full of colour.

“Hey, buddy,” he said slowly, a tired smile drawing itself over his mouth. “You okay?”

Steve felt the exhaustion grip him, the blood in his veins turning to lead. “Yeah,” he replied, throat thick.

A moment of silence passed through them. Steve wondered what Bucky was thinking, that night before they went to camp, when the bottle landed on him and he looked down at his lips.

“Hey, Bucky?”

It didn’t matter. Bucky had a picture of Natasha and him on his phone; they were sticking out their tongues. Bucky had that look in his eyes that said he was going to kiss her as soon as the camera was gone. A peck on the lips – a kiss pressed to her cheek. He was the coolest guy in school. He had to date the coolest girl. That was the rules – it couldn’t be any other way.

Steve was his best friend.

“Yeah, Steve?”

“Whatcha reading?”

Bucky looked down at the magazine. “Spider-Man,” he replied easily. “He’s just about to rescue MJ. Again.”

“Too bad he couldn’t do that for Gwen,” Steve retorted, and Bucky laughed, which was what he had intended, but he also knew the joke didn’t deserve it.

“Too bad,” Bucky repeated. He paused. “Want me to read it to you?”

“Please.” Steve leaned back on the pillow, closing his eyes. “With the voices.”

“With the voices? You kill me, Rogers.”

“Before Ma comes back,” Steve mumbled. He could feel himself falling into sleep again. “Read to me, before Ma comes back.”

He fell asleep as Bucky spoke, even the funny voices not enough to keep him awake. He dreamt of the white Converse that Bucky had bought him for his birthday, and how his ma had screamed for Steve to give them back, and then how Bucky had been irritated at that, and how he had almost kissed him at Natasha’s party, and how he was so mean and yet so kind to Sam.

Bucky Barnes was everything and nothing and everything all over again.

One thing was for sure. That summer, the bitching summer that he’d been dreaming of for years, wouldn’t be filled with water fights and Clint’s barn. It would be filled with hospital rooms and blood tests, with Bucky by his side.

“Imma join the army when I’m older, Ma,” Steve told Sarah when she sat down beside him, soft and exhausted. Bucky was asleep. His pa came to drag him out, saluting Sarah as he went.

Steve’s ma frowned at him, setting down her knitting. “Why, love?” she asked.

It seemed a strange question. So many things were strange, hard to understand. “I want to be a soldier,” Steve explained, feeling as if this should have been obvious. “Soldiers don’t get sick, Ma.”

Sarah took a sharp breath. Steve wondered if her chest was protesting the same as his was.

“Sometimes soldiers get sick too, darling,” she told him, voice gentle. “Sometimes they get sicker than any of us.”

Steve shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “Soldiers don’t get sick. Soldiers are strong, Ma.”

Sarah decided further argument was pointless. She would be correct.


	13. Chapter 13

When they returned to school in September, Steve was still reeling from his tuberculosis diagnosis, but the doctor cleared him for education, much to his chagrin.

“Are you _sure_ I can go to school?”

“Absolutely, dear boy. You’re fine and dandy! Your mam can take care of you when you get home. You’ll feel better getting on your feet again.”

Steve walked into Leavenworth Middle School feeling like a leper. He’d only been out of the loop for eight weeks, nine at most, but it felt as if he had missed everything and then some.

Clint had a spot on the side of his face that he resolutely kept picking at until it scabbed over, and everyone on the bus pointed at it and made disgusted faces as Clint slid further and further down in his seat. Nat was the only one to reach out and try to touch it, and although everyone flinched at Nat and Clint flinched at everyone, he stayed very still, even though it seemed to physically pain him to do so.

Apparently on the last day of camp – just after Nat got out of her mandatory therapy sessions to talk about her anger issues, about what had driven her to basically castrate one of the park rangers – Clint had asked Nat to go out with him sometime.

“You wanna get smoothies?” he asked. (Bucky acted this out for Steve afterwards; Steve and Sam had fallen into some poison ivy and spent the last day in the nurse’s office sharing a lollipop, which was, in every way now that he thought about it, quite disgusting.) “I mean, if you wanna. We could go to Julie’s…”

“No.”

Nat’s answer was just like that. Very firm and very sure and very dismissive. The second she said it, Bucky said she turned back around to Betty and Jane and walked off with them. They went running in the woods searching for chestnuts with Carol and her brother Riley, leaving Clint gaping after Nat in the middle of the tarmac.

Steve didn’t understand. He furrowed his eyebrows together. “I thought Nat liked Clint, though.”

“Me too,” Bucky said with a shrug, because by that stage in camp, him and Nat were broken up. Everything happened too quickly and it felt a lot like a mish-mash to Steve. The tuberculosis had affected his brain, they said, made him think slower and not care much about anything, and when he was undiagnosed, he spent all of his time curled up in bed either with Bucky or Tony or Sam. Bucky recounted all the stories, but they were jumbled.

Something like this: Bucky and Nat broke up. Nat was the one to end it. Bucky didn’t really care; he fell in and out of love like it was yet another trend. Clint asked Nat out after witnessing her display with the ranger. She said no, and walked away.

The next morning, Riley mumbled to Sam that Carol had woken up in the middle of the night to get some water from the tap outside and she had heard little snuffles and Natasha Romanoff, scary Natasha Romanoff, had pressed her face very hard into her pillow and her shoulders were shaking and she was crying.

Steve wasn’t sure he believed that part, but it did seem as if, although Nat had all the time in the world to talk to Clint and did so incessantly every second of the day, she never had enough time to say what she really wanted to. They hadn’t changed – for all intents and purposes Steve would’ve been sure nothing had happened at all, except Bucky had seen it, and Bucky rarely lied. They hadn’t changed, and that was the weirdest thing. They hadn’t changed except Nat looked at Clint for a second too long every single time she looked at him. Maybe she was making up for how Clint very rarely looked at her, now.

During the summer when Steve was out of the picture, Bucky got a new baby sister. He came running to Steve’s door, and Steve trailed himself from bed, because his ma was at work so she couldn’t answer.

He was dressed in a pair of ratty pyjamas and one of Bucky’s hoodies that he had left behind, and when he opened the door the light burned into his eyes, but then Bucky was standing in front of the sun, shielding him from it, blinding him with his smile.

“Her name’s Rebecca!” he yelled excitedly. Steve winced, a flash of pain going through his temple.

“Who’s name?”

“My sister! My new baby sister!”

Bucky’s mom had been pregnant for so long Steve had forgotten she was pregnant altogether. Bucky had done much the same, at least until he saw the little pink bundle cradled in his father’s arms.

The Barnes brought little Becca around to see Sarah when she came home from work, and Sarah touched the baby’s face and held her on her lap and touched her tiny nose. Steve barely looked at the child. It was too wrinkly and cried too much and he’d never seen a baby before. He was too busy looking at Bucky, anyway, whose eyes sparkled and teeth shone and had only one spot on the end of his nose and no other ones.

He had braces now, Bucky. When he kissed girls on the playground, their lips got stuck on the metal.

(One night, Steve’s ma wasn’t coming back from work until midnight. Bucky left at nine o’clock. He had to get home before dark, although it was already dusk when he left, and Steve knew Winnie would yell at him. Bucky always preferred Winnie yelling at him than his dad, so he went home late all the time – Steve didn’t let himself hope it was because he wanted to spend more time with him.

One night, Steve’s ma was gone, and the house was empty, and instead of feeling afraid like he usually did, jumping at every brush of the wind or rustle of a bag outside, a rabbit nibbling on the corner of the front door, he felt all coiled up. One night Steve lay in bed and he stared at the ceiling because he couldn’t sleep, but he wasn’t scared. Instead, his body felt like it was pins and needles all over, like his skin was static.

One night, Steve thought about how, only half an hour ago, Bucky had started tickling him in the side. They were bored, you see, and Bucky never liked being bored much – they spent so much time together they didn’t have much to talk about, but they always found something to do. Either way, Bucky was tickling him, his fingers firm and insistent against Steve’s side, and Steve had screamed and tried to get away and scuttled backwards and Bucky followed him.

Bucky was stubborn and fantastic and he was laughing. He followed Steve, pinned him down to the bed, allowed his fingers to continue tickling against Steve’s side and Steve cackled with laughter, rolled around and tried to get out from under him, but then Bucky’s thigh brushed against his and Steve felt a whole lot of blood shoot downwards.

He hadn’t found wrestling very much fun after that. Instead, he paid attention to the soft tendrils of curls on the back of Bucky’s neck. The little sheen of sweat on his forehead. How wet his lips were. How easy it would be for Bucky’s thigh to brush against _there_ just another time, to get that feeling back that he’d never had before but that was _amazing fantastic incredible._

One night, Sarah was at work and Steve allowed his hand to go down there. Nothing happened. He felt stupid. His ears were blazing, and his cheeks were itching with embarrassment. He lay there with his hand down his boxers and he wondered if Bucky ever did something like this, because Bucky was always a step ahead of him in everything, and –

Oh. Steve went even redder. He felt as if someone had punched him in the gut, but very, very gently. His stomach was coiling in on itself. He closed his eyes, and all he saw was Bucky lying in his double bed – because of course Bucky had a double bed, Bucky had everything, even in a small house – with _his_ hand down _his_ pants and then Steve thought about _Bucky’s_ hand doing what his was doing right now and …

He was thrusting upwards, little whines escaping from his lips, free hand fisting the sheets. “ _Fuck!”_

The word that slipped from his own lips was enough to cause him to still. He looked down at his hand, at the mess he had made, and wondered if this was what Clint meant when he talked about getting off.

As he rooted around for tissues, legs weak, face blazing, Steve wondered if Clint thought about Natasha when he did this, the same as Steve thought about Bucky.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is the Donut Scandal, and will be much longer! Hopefully I will have it posted before the 18th, which is when I start uni. Thanks to everybody for commenting and I hope you enjoy! Comments really inspire me, and I'm so appreciative of all of you!


	14. Chapter 14

“I need your help.”

Tony came into the eighth-grade common room, blustering, on a Wednesday afternoon. Steve and Bucky were relaxing on the L-shaped couch, Steve’s legs draped over Bucky’s knees, and the rest of the group were in class. It was Steve’s favourite period of the week; that one half hour where he just had Bucky and Bucky just had him, no one else to distract either of them. Of course it would be ruined by Tony Goddamn Stark.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” Bucky asked, chewing obnoxiously on his bubble gum. Steve liked watching his mouth as he did it. It was like Brad Pitt’s, that mouth, though a little thinner and infinitely more well known. Steve could draw it out from memory alone.

Tony didn’t even seem to hear Bucky’s question. “I need your help!” he repeated, more frantic this time. His face, streaked with ink from where his pen had burst and Nat had only hurt rather than helped in the clean-up process, was red under the blue.  Steve felt his heart pound altogether not unpleasantly in his chest. “What’s up, Tony?” he asked.

“I need your help.”

“Yeah, we got that,” Bucky said, pushing forward so Steve had to move his feet. Steve grumbled about the movement, but accepted that if they were going to be dragged into whatever idea Tony had going on, there’d be a lot more movement involved altogether.  “Tell us more specifics, Tony.”

“Okay,” Tony said. He dropped down into the sofa. He was so comfortable everywhere but his own home. “Maya Hansen. You know Maya Hansen, right?”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “That chick from biology class you’ve been mooning over?”

“Not mooning, but yeah,” Tony said, waving his hand dismissively. “I need your help getting her attention.”

“You’re Tony Stark,” Steve said, while Bucky, in the background, groaned and ran his hands down over his face. “Why do you need us to get attention for you?”

“Steve’s right,” Bucky said. Steve’s stomach flipped. “You’re usually pretty good at that yourself.”

“I know!” Tony exclaimed, eyes wide, curls wild against his forehead. “I don’t know what it is! I answered so many questions in class today, I even got to be her _lab partner_. And she still…” He stopped, shoulders deflating. “She still doesn’t see me.”

Steve and Bucky glanced over at each other. It would be, in both of their opinions (that was something that happened now, that happened a lot more recently - Steve looked at Bucky and Bucky looked at Steve, and they didn’t need to say a word to realise what the other was thinking), physically impossible not to see Tony Stark. He might not have been as intrinsically popular as Bucky was, but he was loud, he was argumentative, he seemed to command the presence of a room more and more as his confidence increased, especially if Reed walked in beside him, or Rhodes was chuckling in the background. Self-doubt was something that wasn’t too unusual to note with Tony, but it was never this openly admitted to. His crush on Maya must have been serious, even if it had only been voiced a few days beforehand.

“So you want us to get her to _see_ you?” Bucky repeated, raising an eyebrow. He wasn’t making fun of Tony, though - he consciously avoided that now, even looked at Steve out of the corner of his eye just to make sure when his tone strayed, and Steve nodded on this occasion.

Tony nodded as well, far more quickly, and Steve wondered if he felt his brain bouncing around in his head as a result. “By any means necessary,” he replied, as serious as Steve had ever seen him, and Steve let out a sigh. All he wanted was a half hour of peace and quiet to sit in the common room and sweat in the summer heat, Bucky’s legs over his, and now he could see something shining in his best friend’s eyes that meant he had a terrible plan in mind already.

“We should do something to the donuts,” Bucky announced.

Steve and Tony both turned to look at him with nothing but terror in their expressions. “Are you _nuts?”_ Steve exclaimed, while Tony began picking intently at the palms of his hands, obviously not realising what his words had meant when he told Bucky to do anything it took. Bucky never quite knew where the line was, after all - that was why him and Natasha Romanoff kept kissing kissing kissing all the goddamn time, even when they weren’t together, even when they liked other people. Bucky didn’t know how to love her without doing that, and it made Steve want to be sick sometimes, but he wasn’t going to think about it now, he was going to think about Tony instead, who was his friend, even if he was being weird about it.

“Better bonkers than boring!” Bucky replied with a wide grin, which sounded like something Tony would say himself, if he wasn’t so utterly preoccupied with Maya Hansen’s existence.

“The teachers would kill us,” Steve informed Bucky. “Literally murder us.”

Tony remained silent in the background, but judging by how loud he swallowed the lump in his throat, Steve could only assume that he was agreeing with Steve’s declaration.

“It’s Prank Week, boys,” Bucky reminded them both, moving over to set a hand on each of their shoulders, squeezing equally on both sides. (Something ugly and sudden came over Steve then, something that caused him to glare at Bucky and then at Tony and then feel bad about himself, but it disappeared relatively quickly once again.)

“It’s Prank Week on Monday,” Steve said, having known enough about the Leavenworth tradition even if he had never truly taken part before. The Prank Squad - him, Bucky and Sam - as they had been dubbed after camp had participated last year, but they had failed so utterly that the eighth graders had all but laughed them into the ground. This year, though, things might be different. They were about to go into high school, they were the oldest of the middle schoolers, and even if their pranks fell through, no one would dare make fun of them for it.

Before Bucky even spoke again, Steve was halfway to agreeing with him. “The rules of Prank Week say that we’re allowed an extension,” Bucky said, waving his hand dismissively. “If we end the war before it’s even begun, we’ll be _legends._ And we’ll get Maya’s attention for Tony, too, of course.”

It was tacked on as an afterthought, and they all knew it, but two birds with one stone wasn’t exactly something Steve fought back against - after all, he only had so many stones. Plus, Bucky was smiling in a way that he hadn’t really since Becca was born; after the initial enthusiasm at having a new baby sister, the reality settled in once again that it would be months upon months upon years of screaming and crying and storms within the household, and Bucky was more exhausted than Steve had ever seen him, though Natasha said it was no worse than it had been when Delilah and Mary were born. Steve hadn’t paid enough attention to Bucky back then to know, at least not in the way that he did now.

“Sam got some bees,” Steve said slowly, and Tony looked at him then with a mixture of betrayal and appreciation. “We could fill the donut box with them, and you know, wait for it.”

“Wait for it where?” Tony asked, the first words that he had said since he blustered in, but Bucky was grinning ear to ear in that slightly dangerous way he had about him sometimes. Maybe he had picked it up from Natasha, or maybe she got it from him, it was hard to tell where she started, sometimes, and where he ended.

“Put bees in the staff room!” Bucky announced, far too loud to get away with it if there was anyone else in the room, but there wasn’t, and therefore they managed to get away with it.

“Bees don’t sting unless they’re pissed off, right?” Steve said, thinking over this more intently, but feeling the same buzz (no pun intended) of adrenaline in his veins as he always did when he went into something with Bucky. His best friend made everything seem brighter, more exciting, more significant - it was something that Steve had always adored about him.

“Exactly, no one will get hurt,” Bucky replied, and Steve had enough experience to know that was an afterthought as well. Of course, Steve had already satisfied himself by that point and seemingly had managed to get Tony on board as well, because the dark haired boy stopped making his palms bleed and met Bucky and Steve’s eyes, nodding in determination.

“I’ll get Wilson,” Tony announced, and with that he turned on the heels of his expensive shoes and headed to come up with an elaborate story to get Sam out of class. Steve turned to Bucky, saw the smile on his friend’s face, and laughed when Bucky clapped his hand on his back.

“We’re the dream team, Rogers.”

“‘Til the end of the line, asshole,” Steve replied, and Bucky thumped him again, harder this time, but nowhere near as much as he did with Clint. In the beginning, that had irritated Steve, but now he realised that it wasn’t because Bucky didn’t think he was capable of handling it (Bucky never thought Steve was incapable of anything - he was the only person, at least now, that looked at Steve like he was made of steel rather than paper, who trusted that he wouldn’t break under his hands). Now, it just made his heart pound uncomfortably in his chest, and he was mere moments away from correlating the feel of Bucky’s fingers pressing into the crick of his neck to the images he pictured when he was in bed at night with his hand down his pants when Tony burst back in, this time with a grinning Sam by his side.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” Sam said. He had obviously been in shop class, because he was covered in grease and dust from the sander, but that worked out to their advantage, as things had a tendency to do. Sam held up a large roll of duct tape and three pairs of workman’s gloves, and Bucky laughed.

“You beautiful man!” Bucky went over to Sam, grabbed him in a half hug and pressed a wet, noisy kiss to Sam’s tight curls, and Sam rolled his eyes good-naturedly. He was one of the only people that Steve knew who was unaffected by Bucky’s close proximity, which was just another reason that Sam Wilson deserved his utmost respect. “Get the bees, baby. The Prank Squad is back in business!”

There was no real need to sneak through the corridors. After all, they would be caught on the cameras regardless of what they did, and the teachers would be able to piece everything together once the sanctity of their donuts was compromised. Still, Bucky stopped Sam before he left the common room with a hand on his arm, pressing a finger to his lips. “We’re secret agents,” he said, and if anyone else had uttered those words they would have been laughed at, called childish, but when Bucky said them, Sam’s eyes merely widened and he nodded, solemn, understanding of the great purpose that had been placed upon him.

Sam led the charge, raising his hand in a fist like the soldiers in the movies they watched did sometimes. Steve wasn’t quite sure what it meant, so he just followed Sam’s feet instead, stopping when he stopped, going when he went. They moved from one set of lockers to another, ducking down behind bins or slipping into lockers until imaginary enemies passed by, and finally they reached Sam’s locker.

It was one of the bigger ones - Nat had put in a good word for him, apparently. She had a soft spot for him a mile wide, though no one seemed willing to talk about it, and Sam was too good of a person to take advantage of her kindness. When Steve stepped forward he could hear a subtle humming behind the metal, and when Sam opened his locker, it only became a more severe buzzing. Each of them put on the workman’s gloves before taking the bees out. They were in little boxes, and Steve could feel them running and flying into the cardboard sides when they were in his hands. Tony didn’t have gloves, but he didn’t need them. He was the supervisor, that was his role, and right now he was watching out for Fury, informing them every few moments that the ‘patch was still in the box.’

“Staff room,” Bucky said, once Sam’s locker was closed once more and the bees were safely in their hands, each carrying a box with the same delicacy as they would an overfilled jug of water. The staff room was tucked away in the back of the school, a place where there was barely enough room for half of the people that taught in the facility once the mini fridge was installed, but the teachers all frequented it regardless. If rumours were to be believed there were some educators who didn’t mind being pressed close to each other - Mr. Xavier and Mr. Lehnsherr were the most scandalous of all, but Ms. Grey and Mr. Summers had a certain secrecy to them as well, especially when Mr. Howlett was around, or Miss Frost. (Sometimes Steve thought middle school was the worst place in the world, the most complicated set of relationships he would have, and then he looked at his teachers and was comforted by the fact that it never got any better.)

They emptied out the box of donuts, shoving them all in the bottom of Sam’s bag and knowing that they’d be heroes at lunch when they passed them around under the table, and placed the boxes of bees in instead. Looking around at each other, they counted down from three and then removed the lids, closing the donut box as quickly as possible and taping it back together, making it look as if it hadn’t been tampered with at all. The teachers would walk in, buzzing with stories to tell their colleagues, and they wouldn’t be able to hear the tell-tale humming.

It was fool proof. They had finally pulled off the greatest prank that the world world ever know, and now they would all walk to the nurse’s office and state that Tony had thrown up and they’d been helping him, a cover story that couldn’t be denied. Nurse Temple would back them up, and Mr. Xavier just felt sorry for Steve the grand majority of the time, so they would be able to live on as the greatest unsung heroes of Leavenworth Middle School, though their story would certainly move by word of mouth for decades to come, just as stories of their parents’ escapades reached their ears with increasing frequency as they aged.

Life went on as normal for the next few hours, although it was almost impossible for Tony, Steve, Sam and Bucky to look at each other for the rest of the day without bursting into laughter. Due to the purpose of the entire thing, Tony was allowed to lean over to Maya Hansen and inform her, in a whisper that Bucky would have been proud of (his lips were so close to Maya’s ears that he was basically kissing her neck, something that made the lump in Steve’s throat only increase), that he had planned something very special, and that it had all been in her honour.

It was lunch before everything went spectacularly to shit. The loudspeaker crackled, loud enough to distract them from the fact that Natasha seemed about ready to pull off her shirt in the heat and the entirety of the male population of Leavenworth Middle School was on the edge of their seats begging her to do so.

“ _James Barnes and Steve Rogers to the Headmaster’s office immediately. Thank you.”_

The announcement was repeated twice after that to ensure that they heard it, but honestly, Steve felt as if he was underwater. It wasn’t like it was the first time they had been called before Fury, signified by the fact that Bucky merely shrugged his shoulders and made for the door, waiting only for Steve to follow him, but Steve had always been a big believer in listening to his gut.

Right now? Right now, his gut was saying _you’re fucked you’re fucked both of you are fucked._

As it turned out, Steve’s gut was right.

“What the hell were the two of you thinking?” Headmaster Fury demanded, his voice like thunder in the small, fusty office. Their mothers had been called, as had an ambulance. As it turned out, Ms. Grey was deathly allergic to bees. Miss Frost, who made it a point to roll her eyes each time the physics teacher walked down the hall, had immediately dropped all anger towards her, fell to her knees beside the woman and hit her face, before screaming out that someone needed to call for a doctor.

No one was meant to get hurt. That was what they should have been saying, but they had been here before. They were the only ones sitting in the office, they were the only ones that they had anything on (probably because it had been their free period), and therefore, they were the only ones with their asses on the line. Steve and Bucky never had a problem getting in trouble, or getting out of it, but they hated bringing other people down with them. For that reason, they remained extremely silent as Fury continued to rant and rave, calling them irresponsible, selfish, everything that they were.

Finally, there was a moment of peace and quiet. Steve hadn’t cried, though Bucky’s eyes were plenty wet enough for both of them. Not a tear fell down his cheek, and therefore, he had remained strong. Steve didn’t look at him in case their eyes meeting prompted any further response, which Fury would surely take as guilt.

Fury placed his palms on the wood, leaning over the desk. “I am only going to ask this once,” he said, deliberately drawing out each word so that they knew he wasn’t fucking around. “Whose idea was this, boys? Speak now and forever hold your peace, or somethin’.” (Fury had to hold himself back from swearing a lot. He said ‘fuck’ every other word when he was home. Steve knew that because now, Nat hit her elbow against a desk or a door handle and her husky voice went _fuck fuck fuck._ Steve liked how it sounded.)

Steve opened his mouth, but not before he heard Bucky speak beside him.

“It was me, sir,” Bucky said. Fury furrowed his eyebrows, but some of the tension released itself from his shoulders. He liked people taking accountability - it was how they were still in school at all, rather than expelled. “It was all my idea. Steve actually tried to stop me.”

Fury’s eyes - or eye, as it was - turned to look at Steve. He didn’t ask if Steve agreed with what Bucky was saying because he knew the blond boy would disagree, and that would only make Fury’s job more complicated. He might have been an extremely dedicated man, but even people married to their jobs didn’t want them any harder than they needed to be, and he had another two hundred students to worry about that day.

“Fine,” Fury said. “Barnes, you’re suspended for a week. Rogers, get out of my sight. If I hear you touching a hair on anyone’s head, self defence or not, in the next week, I’m kicking you out of school. Literally." 

Bucky and Steve both mumbled apologies and stood up from their chairs, making their way out of the office. They made their way back to the cafeteria silently, Steve sliding back into his seat and Bucky moving to get his bag. Winnie would be there soon to pick him up, and Steve knew he would be called to the Headmaster’s office again to explain to Sarah what had gone down. When they walked in, though, everyone started whispering.

The whispering, the gossip, the rumours only increased when Bucky nodded at them and made for the door. “Barnes got _suspended,”_ Laura Kinney whispered to Matt Murdock, as if to keep him up to date with what was happening. Jessica Jones nudged Matt Murdock, as if to ask what Laura had said to him, and then he informed the rest of his table, including Big Cage who had a voice like a loudspeaker, and Danny Rand, the biggest gossip that Leavenworth Middle School had ever seen.

By the end of lunch, everyone was laughing, talking about how Bucky Barnes had pulled off the best prank in history single-handedly. Tony was talking to Maya, and since he had claimed ownership beforehand, she was looking at him with renewed respect. Being friends with Bucky Barnes, especially close enough to be let in on a prank like this, was worth its weight in gold in this town, and Maya just proved it by placing a kiss on the side of Tony’s face, and he went a pleasant shade of red to make up for it.

Steve, though, was seething. Natasha noticed, but she didn’t say anything - it wasn’t in her character to get involved, at least not immediately. She would gather information, she would figure out what had truly happened, and then she would insert herself into the middle of the situation, twisting it for her own purposes. Steve was sick to shit of her, of Bucky, of Tony, of _everyone._ Even Sam was not exempt from his disdain, and when Steve walked out of school that day, it was alone. His friends trailed behind him, in a group that laughed and talked about what happened, while he stalked forward, purposefully sitting in the seat beside the bus driver on the way home so that no one could join him and ask what was wrong.

No one did, either. They must’ve known by the look on his face that it wouldn’t accomplish anything, but Steve simply took it as another sign that he was right to be pissed off at everyone around him, and festered in that until the bus rolled up near his house.

Bucky was at his front door when he walked up the path. He was sitting on the step, his back against the pebble-dashed wall, seated beside Geoffrey the Gnome. Bucky spent a lot of time at Steve’s house now - he couldn’t sleep for the baby, and Steve had finally managed to admit that he hated being alone at night. It wasn’t a surprise to see him there, but tonight, Steve wanted to do anything but talk to him.

“‘m not in the mood, Buck,” Steve muttered. When Bucky stood up, blocking his way to the front door, Steve hit against his shoulder as he moved past, rooting around in his pocket for his key. “I _said,_ I’m not in the mood.”

“Whatsa matter with you, then?” Bucky asked, furrowing his eyebrows. There was a twitch in his jaw, too. Typically he wouldn’t have been so reactive, but it had been a day and a half for him, and if he was anything like Steve - too much to ever work, why did Steve think they could even be _friends,_ it was stupid - he would be spending the grand majority of the time today thinking about Ms. Grey, how sick she would be, hoping that she would be okay, that she would be able to forgive them.

No, not them. _Him._ Bucky had taken all the responsibility for himself. Steve made to slam the door behind him but Bucky caught it before he could, making his way into the hall.

“God’s sake,” Steve hissed, reeling around to face his friend. “Can you not get a _hint?_ I don’t want you here tonight!”

“Why the fuck not?” Bucky demanded. “Your Ma’s at work, the baby’s screaming her head off, we _always_ do-”

“Always?” Steve repeated. “Why don’t we talk about that for a minute? What we _always_ do.”

Bucky blinked a few times, taking a step back. “What the fuck are you talking about, Stevie?”

“Don’t do that,” Steve warned, lifting a finger to Bucky’s face. “Don’t belittle me.”

His hand caught Steve’s wrist as the blond boy attempted to walk into the kitchen. Steve didn’t even look in his best friend’s eyes before snapping his hand back, and Bucky’s grasp faltered immediately, like he had been burned by the response.

“I wasn’t _belittling_ you! Where the hell would you get-”

“You don’t think I’m capable of handling it!” Steve said. His voice was dangerously close to yelling, he felt like there was a lump in his throat the size of the Ireland his Ma had described, and where Bucky had grabbed it felt as if there was a tingling under his skin. “You don’t think I’m capable of handling anything!”

“Is this about Fury?” Bucky asked, and Steve let out a groan. “Because what I did there was _protect_ you, I don’t-”

“Exactly! I don’t need your protection, Buck. I made the decision, hell it was _my_ idea, and now the whole damn school’s treating you as a hero.”

“You think I wanted that?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Steve asked, exasperated. “You don’t get it, do you? What it’s like to be me. What it’s like to have everyone looking at _you_ and I’m just … your sidekick, or some shit.”

“No one looks at you like that.”

“You’re lying.” He was. Bucky never shuffled on his feet, not until the words coming out of his mouth were such bullshit even he couldn’t believe them himself. “You’re fucking lying to me right now.”

“Who cares if people think you’re a hero, Steve?” Bucky asked. “You know what you are, I know what you are-”

“No, you _pity_ me. There’s a difference in that and-”

“You know what I think?” Bucky said. The change was almost a physical one as he shifted from defence to offence. He had never been particularly good at the former, after all - he was all muscle and bone, war buried in his spine-bones. “I think you’re looking for a fight with me, and I ain’t giving it to you.”

Steve wondered if Bucky had copied that line from one of his parents’ fights, or maybe he had heard Tony saying it. “Why the fuck would I be looking for a fight, Buck?”

“I don’t know!” Bucky spluttered, throwing his hands up in the air. There were pink blotches over his skin, something that Steve had seen only a few times, and Steve felt a little satisfied at the sight. “You’ve been real weird lately, Steve. You’ve barely looked at me, and when you do it’s like-”

“Like what?”

“Like weird! It’s been weird. And you don’t even seem to notice, which just makes it even weirder.”

“Well, if I’m so weird, then get the hell out of my house.” (That one, at least the last bit, Steve had heard in Tony’s mansion. Howard never took to it well.)

“I’m not going-”

“Get out of my house, Buck.”

Bucky looked at Steve for a long moment. In that moment, all that Steve could see was the guy that had drawn a robin perfectly on the first try. The guy that got A+s on everything and still didn’t seem satisfied. The guy that had taken a chair out from under Sam’s ass in the cafeteria and was yet to apologise for it properly. The guy that kissed Natasha Romanoff all the time, the guy that tasted the strawberry lipbalm on her lips, and the guy that slept across from him in bed the nights when his sisters were being incredibly loud.

“Fine,” Bucky said, and the world was underwater as he slammed the front door behind him. Steve had sat down in his window, pulled out his sketch book as he did every day after school, but all he saw was his best friend in pencil, in pen, in paint and in chalk - all he saw was Bucky, laughing, smiling, frowning, groaning in frustration or delight.

Steve had half expected Bucky to show up again later on, but he didn’t. They had a week left of school before summer, and Bucky had been suspended for it, so he didn’t see him at school. Steve wasn’t sure if he was angry, if he was pleased, if he was missing Bucky or if he was glad to be out of his shadow. (All he did know was that he became more and more grateful for the fact that his Ma worked late into the night, because he ended up in bed hating and touching himself more than he could put into words.) When Steve sat out on the fire escape of the greengrocer’s with Natasha after the last day of school had given out, she informed him that she had spotted Bucky at the bowling alley a few days before, a few days after their fight, and he had been with Susan Storm and he had kissed her.

“Pressed her against the wall and everything,” Natasha had informed Steve. The words didn’t seem to cut into her like they did into him. Maybe that was because she had tasted Bucky Barnes before (not that Steve wanted that - all he wanted was his best friend to care about him the way he cared about his girls). “Seemed like a real thing.”

It would be a long summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's back, back again ....
> 
> Uni has been kicking my ass, but this world and these characters have remained in my mind and I'm so pumped to get back into it. I know I've made promises before, but this time the inspiration is there, and I will be working on this every spare moment. 
> 
> I hope my loyal followers are still there, and I also hope that you guys continue to leave your amazing feedback. I appreciate every single one of you!


	15. Chapter 15

Steve, like everyone else in his friendship group, had been under the mistaken impression that the second he was a freshman in high school, things would feel monumentally different. He had assumed that facial hair would immediately sprout from his chin, that his shoulders would widen to a point where it would be difficult for him to walk through the door, and that girls would perhaps not be falling at his feet, but at least he would be able to talk to them without choking.

That was far from the case. In reality, nothing changed. If anything, it got worse. The summer before they went to high school was supposed to be the last eight weeks that they could climb trees and draw hopscotch courts with chalk on the pavement without feeling as if they were being immature, but instead, Steve mostly spent it being bored. That wasn’t to say that he hadn’t done anything, because of course he had. He had gone out with Betty repeatedly for ice cream (he wasn’t sure what that meant, and even though he had plenty of opportunities to speak on the way back from Graham’s ice cream van on the other side of town, he never quite found the right time to open his mouth and ask if they were dating), he had spent evenings at Clint’s barn with Natasha, flicking bugs off their arms as they watched Clint and Barney argue intensely on the front porch, and he’d even been invited out to bowl with Matt Murdock and his friends.

Steve liked Matt Murdock a lot. They both had busted knuckles at the best of times, but Matt’s were even worse than Steve’s were. Anytime someone asked him about them a muscle in his jaw clenched and unclenched, and Jessica Jones appeared out of nowhere to inform them that he was blind, he fell a lot, and his knuckles broke the fall rather than destroying that ‘annoyingly perfect’ nose of his. Steve didn’t believe a word of it. He knew a fighter when he saw one, even if his eyes were concealed by the red lenses of his glasses. Matt spoke very slowly, his words went up and down, and all of the girls leaned in to him when he did so, even Jessica Jones, who claimed that she would rather lick hot tarmac off the road than ever go anywhere near Matt Murdock. No one believed her, of course, especially Natasha who never believed anyone, but Luke Cage always seemed satisfied when she said it, so no one questioned it.

No one questioned Big Cage at the best of times. It was an unspoken rule of Leavenworth Middle School that immediately carried on to Leavenworth High School, partly because they had not moved buildings, cohorts or sites. The only thing that was different were the teachers that would take them for classes, but even at that the grand majority were the same. They still had Ms. Frost for English, they had Ms. Grey for physics and Mr. Xavier for biology. Nothing had changed, but everything had changed.

Steve pretended that wasn’t because he hadn’t been talking to Bucky Barnes, at least not properly, at least not in the way that they had always talked to each other. Over the summer, he had believed that the day would come when Bucky would arrive on his doorstep, Stella the dog’s lead looped around his hand, an excuse dripping from that amazing mouth of his, and he would ask Steve to come out on a walk with him and that would be it, that would be the equivalent of an apology, and everything would be fine.

Nothing of the sort happened. Sarah had sighed lightly when she came back from her thirteen-hour shift. She shuffled against Steve’s covers, touched his forehead when he was lying in bed about to go to sleep, and had told him that he could make the decision, too, that it wasn’t all down to Bucky. Steve had jolted his jaw out, just like Matt Murdock did, and had shook his head before burying his face in the pillow. There was no universe in which he would lower himself to show up at Bucky’s door. What if the other boy didn’t open up? Steve was pretty sure that he would die of embarrassment, or melt into the doormat right then and there, and Winnie would be sad about that, which would make baby Becca cry, and Steve really didn’t want that.

He told himself he was fine with the fact that Bucky was on the other side of the campfire when they all went around to Clint’s farm every Friday night and that they only spoke when they had to, to navigate around each other, to pass the buns at a barbecue, or to ask if they had an eraser. It was like it was back to the beginning, a full circle that Steve had never intended to make, and now here they were, strangers again, though Steve knew him so well that it almost burned his mouth to say that to Natasha, who rolled her eyes when he did but provided no advice other than that.

On the first day of September 2005, Steve had been pretty damn sure that he was going to walk into high school for the first time, see Bucky Barnes in the corridor, and walk on past him without saying a word. He was prepared for it, even, though he was far from looking forward to it. He planned out what he would say if they were forced to do ice breakers (what he wanted to say but wouldn’t, of course, was ‘My name is Steve Rogers, and I don’t have a best friend anymore’) and he planned out what he would tell people when they raised their eyebrows and questioned why he wasn’t with Bucky anymore, the teachers included.

“I am so excited to be back!” Betty squealed, grabbing onto Steve’s arm as they walked through the halls. She had her hair in tight ringlets today, an attempt to emulate Natasha and Jane’s soft curls, but it hadn’t worked out entirely well for her. She still had the same large glasses, the same braces against her teeth, and Steve still wanted to kiss the breath from her lungs, so he didn’t find the ringlets too much of a distraction. “Ms. Grey says that I can take all three sciences if I want instead of two and an arts subject, which means I’ll be able to go to medical school! Isn’t that exciting, Steve?”

Steve smiled tightly, the expression far from casual on his face. Bucky Barnes was walking the other way, and Betty’s smile immediately dropped. She reached her hand down and took Steve’s in hers with a purpose that Steve had seen only when she was holding a scalpel before dissection in biology class, and then held her head slightly higher as they walked past.

Bucky was brown. Brown as a chestnut. Brown as the wooden bedposts in his ma’s room. Summer was good to him, always had been. Steve remembered how, in the years before this one, he had traced out the glimmer of sweat in the little pool in between his collarbones, how it had emphasised the sharp pull of skin against his bones, the lean muscle on his stomach. He was wearing a t-shirt, bright white, crisp against him, and he had sunglasses tucked onto his neckline.

Steve all but felt his throat close up as he walked up to him. He opened his mouth, only to find that it was filled with cotton wool. Bucky smiled at him then – actually smiled, though there was something like hesitance to it, something awkward where it was once effortless – and said the two most frustrating words that he ever could have uttered.

“Right, Steve?”

How was he even supposed to respond to that? (Answer: he wasn’t. Like so many other things with Bucky, that had been calculated, a deliberate move to render Steve powerless, and he was pissed off about it.) Steve merely pursed his lips, nodded once at Bucky, and continued on down the hall with Betty.

He turned back only once, just in time to see Bucky lean against Natasha’s locker with that smarmy, cocked grin of his on his face, and to see how their lips barely touched before they broke apart. Steve wasn’t sure if they were broken up or back together, he doubted that they even did. They fell apart and they fell together, and no matter how many other girls Bucky got with, he always found his way back to Natasha.

“You should be happy about that,” Jane had said to him once, six months ago approximately, long before they had fallen out, when he and Bucky were still closer than two people could be (but not close enough). “Your two best friends are dating. They love each other, Steve.”

Why, then, did it make him feel sick to see it?

“Steve.”

A familiar voice broke him from his concentration. Steve looked up. Betty hadn’t spoken, it had been Tony, who was on his other side. They were in French class. Dr. Doom had been writing on the board last time Steve checked, but now he was in the middle of a passionate rant towards Peter Parker and his not-girlfriend Gwen Stacy about the proper use of avoir. Steve sighed, and turned to look at Tony.

Tony had broken his nose over the summer. He said he fell down the stairs, but there was a very deliberate crack just below where his eyebrows met. The doctor had put a bandage over his nose for weeks at a time, but now the bandages were doing nothing other than irritating his skin, so it was removed. It was a long purple line, cracked in places. Tony kept putting his hand over it when he was writing or speaking, so that his words were muffled. Bucky always called him out on it, and then looked at Tony for a long moment after he did, as if realising he had been an asshole. Steve always pretended not to hear what was going on.

“Yeah?”

Tony leaned in closer. Steve shifted to the right slightly, unconsciously towards Betty. Tony raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. That was the first sign that something strange was happening. “I have a bit of a problem.”

It was September first. Usually, Tony’s problems came up around Christmas, or Thanksgiving, Easter or his birthday (which he always forgot, or pretended to at least). He had broken up with Maya – they had dated for a while, and she had put her hand down his pants during one of the house parties held by one of the older guys, but that was the extent of what Steve had heard. It was the extent of what he wanted to hear.

“Tell me about it at lunch,” Steve said. “I need to pass French.”

It was a poor excuse, and Tony knew it. The only reason Steve would need to pass French was to get into college, something that he had long since accepted wasn’t in the cards for him. He wasn’t Tony, he wasn’t Reed Richards, he definitely wasn’t Bucky Barnes. (Steve looked up then, and when he did, he caught Bucky’s eye for a brief moment before they both hurriedly looked away.)

“It’s a really big problem,” Tony said in a hissed whisper, leaning so close that Steve couldn’t possibly move away. “It involves my dad.”

Steve felt as if the book of French vocabulary sitting in front of him on the desk had leapt up and shoved itself down his throat.

“Okay,” Steve said. “Tell me about it now. Doom’s distracted.”

Across the room, Steve met Daisy Johnson’s eye, who nodded once, and then nudged Matt Murdock. She whispered something in his ear, and at that moment, Matt Murdock let out a sudden scream.

(Sometimes, Sarah had explained, things got a little overwhelming for Matt Murdock. He lived his life in the darkness now, everything else seemed to be louder and more confusing, and his father had been shot in the face behind the school bleachers in the middle of the night during last summer. His dad was involved in something, something that Sarah didn’t like to talk about. Either way, sometimes Matt Murdock screamed during class, sometimes he held his head and rocked a little. Steve wondered how he could do all that and still have girls at his feet, but that was the way of the world. He was a nice guy – kind of.)

Dr. Doom let out a loud sigh and abandoned Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker, who looked over at each other and let out a breath of relief. He immediately grabbed Matt Murdock by the arm and pulled him from his seat. Daisy Johnson jumped up with him, and together they all walked out of the classroom down the hall towards Claire Temple’s office, who was really one hell of a nurse.

“What happened?” Steve said, now that the class had descended into chaos and anything Tony said could be lost to the various conversations occurring around them.

“Well, it’s a little complicated.”

“Isn’t everything?”

“It involves a flamingo.”

Steve blinked several times. Betty leaned forward on her seat at that moment and raised her eyebrows so high that it was almost comical. Steve wanted to kiss her.

“Did you just say flamingo?” she asked.

Tony nodded solemnly. “I need you to help me with it,” he said, “and I’ve already recruited Bucky, too.”

Steve hated high school already.

-

As soon as classes broke for lunch, Bucky and Steve found themselves standing in front of Tony’s locker, shoulder to shoulder as they always had been before, but this time there was an extra six inches between them rather than being pressed together. They hadn’t spoken. The tension hung heavy in the air like a knife, but when Tony arrived, blustering as was characteristic, they did meet each other’s eyes with a look that suggested they would really prefer the ground to swallow them up before they had to deal with this.

“Before we delve into this,” Tony had said in French class, and in physics class to Bucky a few hours before, as it turned out, “we need some backstory.”

A condensed version of the backstory, because Tony Stark, among many other things, has a tendency to ramble incessantly when he is stressed:

On August 15th, 2005, it was Reed Richards fifteenth birthday. Being one of the oldest in the year had its perks, including having your birthday party during the last remnants of summer, and being able to hold the fact that you were older than everyone else over their heads before you even started back to school (not that it gave Reed Richards much of a step up – he was really only well liked because he unwittingly helped people cheat in math, and because he was friends with Susan Storm). Reed Richards’ parents were both scientists. They were very well liked in their town, unlike their pretentious son, and they were very powerful people. For his fifteenth birthday, Reed Richards had a house party. It was a parent-approved house party, at least for the first six hours. Then, Reed’s best friend Ben Grimm, the boy that could not be moved, was pushed down the stairs by Johnny Storm, the pain in Susan Storm’s ass. He broke his leg. Reed Richards’ parents were forced to drive into the nearest city to bring him to the emergency room, and spent eight hours waiting for an available doctor to come and tend to him.

In those eight hours, everything went spectacularly to shit. Steve heard about it in bits and pieces from Jane, who was not as thorough in her gossip as Bucky was, and wasn’t as perceptive as Natasha, but she could definitely pass herself. Johnny Storm had left straight after pushing Ben Grimm down the stairs, and had returned fifteen minutes later with crates of beer from an unspecified source. Danny Rand was also popular for one (1) night only, as he provided bottles of spirits that he had pawned from his foster parents’ liquor cabinet when they weren’t watching. Everyone in attendance, even those that had never drank before, got mildly buzzed – Steve, of course, was included in this.

It was one of the hardest nights of Steve Rogers’ life. He felt his head spinning, could taste vodka in the back of his throat, and he couldn’t quite decide whether he wanted to throw up or sing karaoke, but the worst thing was that in the midst of the underage drinking and the partying, he found himself wishing that he was spending the night with Bucky instead. He found himself missing him. They caught each other’s gaze over the crowd, but fate intervened and kept them apart. Just as well, too, because Steve was convinced that he would’ve said something so embarrassing that death would’ve been the only option afterwards.

Of course, Steve had a tendency to ramble too when it came to Bucky Barnes. This was not his backstory, this was Tony’s.

At that party, the party for Reed Richards’ fifteenth birthday, there was a moment when Tony went up to his best friend, a red solo cup clenched in his calloused hands, and had thrown his arm around Reed’s shoulders. Reed’s eyes were, according to Betty because Steve was too busy trying to find Bucky at this stage (Bucky was throwing up with Nat and Clint in the bathroom, fate had ensured that much), as wide as dinner plates. Tony, though, was drunk, or at least pretending to be. He turned his face towards Reed’s, and for a brief, heart-stopping moment everyone had thought that he was going to do something absolutely insane like kiss him, and then Reed Richards had lifted his hand and unceremoniously threw what he had been drinking in Tony’s face.

Steve argued that it was nothing other than instinct, but Jane was always a fan of drama, so she liked to believe that it was something like a telenovela playing out in front of them. She watched, sipping loudly on her makeshift mimosa (they knew nothing about alcohol, or when to drink what, and so she had just decided to add vodka to what tasted the best to her) and the gears in her head ticked around, deciding how best to make this situation even more dramatic than it already was.

When Reed Richards’ parents returned, they were not angry as everyone had expected. Instead, they were utterly calm, reassuring, and understanding of the fact that everyone has a moment of teenage rebellion. If anything, Reed’s dad had actually seemed _relieved_ that Reed was capable of throwing a party, or that anyone had said yes to his invitation.

Tony had been very perplexed at this. Steve knew why – everyone who knew Tony’s parents knew why. Tony dropped a glass and Howard was breaking his nose (no, he had fallen down the stairs). So when it rolled around to his so called ‘half birthday,’ he had tried to encourage his parents to let him throw a party. They had said no, Howard had screamed it in fact, but Maria had said that they would get him any gift that he wanted.

Tony had chosen a flamingo.

He hadn’t honestly intended his parents to buy it for him. He swore to that, scout’s honour and everything, even though he wasn’t a scout. He crossed over his heart, too, even though he never went to church and he found God impossible to believe in. (Steve didn’t understand that, but Sarah said that there were some people that had so many bad things happen to them that life didn’t seem to be planned out in the slightest, and Steve supposed he could understand that much.) A choice that he had consciously made, though, was the fact that he had brought the flamingo to school when he arrived on the grounds at seven a.m. in order to get a head start on his lab project, and now it was in his locker, starving and terrified of the noise and very, very feral.

“Fury already thinks I was something to do with the Donut Scandal,” Tony said.

“That’s because you were,” Bucky said. His jaw twitch gave Matt Murdock’s a run for its money.

“Not officially,” Tony replied.

Steve stayed quiet.

“We need to figure out a way to get it out of the school,” Tony said, “and I don’t have any free periods today, so it has to happen right now.”

“Why do you need to be involved at all?” Bucky asked. He was obviously irritated – Steve very rarely saw him like this, but then again, recently he had barely seen him at all. “You could’ve sent me and Nat to deal with this while you were in chemistry.”

“Well.” Tony swallowed thickly, and began to scratch at the palm of his right hand. “Me and Nat aren’t really … I mean, we are, but we’re not, and I didn’t really want to … Opening it up seemed kind of, I don’t know, a dick move and I just-”

Steve rested his hand on Tony’s upper arm, stopping the other boy from speaking. “It’s fine,” he said. “We understand. We’ll figure this out, yeah?”

Tony met Steve’s eyes. They were big and brown and they were bloodshot, probably from the broken nose. Steve felt anger well up in his chest, though he tried to push it down. He had too much anger in his body, that was what his Ma said.

Bucky turned to Steve. He looked older, somehow. More tired. He had a rash on the side of his face. He must’ve tried to shave again – Steve could see the tiny pieces of stubble on the curve of his jaw. Tony had that too, but darker. Steve hadn’t noticed until right then.

“Any ideas, punk?”

There was a lick of affection in Bucky’s tone on that last word, and Steve, despite himself, found that laughter left his lips. “Yeah, I have a few,” he said. “Jerk.”

Tony had the look on his face that he always had when he got to the answer of a math question more quickly than Reed managed to (though Steve hadn’t been seeing that very often, either – Tony and Reed were not speaking). “Great!” he declared. “Let’s get this moving, then. What’s our first move?”

“Clearing the hall.”

Steve and Bucky had spoken at the same time, and their words had lined up exactly. Tony’s smirk had become a grin, while the two boys looked over at each other with gaping mouths.

“Well, I have that covered,” Tony said. He thumped a fist against his chest, cleared his throat, and then loudly declared, “Fight behind the school! Big Cage versus Blind Murdock, five minutes!”

It took two minutes, thirteen seconds for the corridor to clear of students. Bucky timed it on his watch – it was his father’s watch, given to him. Steve had raised an eyebrow when he saw it around Bucky’s wrist. “Dad was out on Saturday night,” Bucky said once he noticed, by ways of explanation. Steve let out a sigh of understanding. George Barnes went out, he gambled, and he kissed other women. Sometimes, now, he brought them home too, as long as he knew that Winnie was working late, or over at her friend’s house, which she was more and more often. He asked Bucky not to mention it. Sometimes, because he was nice, he sweetened the deal even more, gave Bucky presents. Steve kind of wished he had a dad as cool as George.

“We need something to keep the flamingo in while we take it out,” Steve said.

“Agreed,” Bucky replied.

“Well we all know you two are agreed,” Tony said, sounding somewhat petulant besides appearing entirely pleased with himself. “What do you suggest?”

Bucky shrugged. Steve leaned against the lockers, moving up a few when he heard the loud squawking and felt the vibrations of the flamingo rumbling around in Tony’s locker. “This definitely feels like animal cruelty,” Steve said.

“We’re saving its life,” Tony said, rather confidently. “Dad doesn’t know Mom got me the flamingo. I need to get it to Jarvis before he finds out.”

Who knew what Howard would do with a pink bird in his pristine living room, or running up his marble staircase. Steve and Bucky nodded once, at the same time, resolute in their determination.

“There are sacks in the gym store,” Bucky suggested. “We used them for the sack race on sports day.”

“There are ropes there too,” Steve said.

“Woah there,” Tony interjected. “We aren’t wrangling a wild animal here, guys. We are dealing with a family pet. Bernard is stressed, but he’s not a monster.”

“We’ll get a baseball bat too,” Bucky said, entirely ignoring that fact that Tony had spoken at all. “Just in case.”

Tony made a noise in the back of his throat halfway between the sound Bernard was currently making and the sound of a chair squeaking against linoleum flooring. Steve rolled his eyes, but there was a smile on his face while he did it. He knocked his shoulder against Tony’s. “We’ve faced worse,” he said, even if they really, really hadn’t, and the fact that this was their second animal related transgression against the schooling system in as many years. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Figure what out?”

In that moment, Steve, Tony and Bucky turned around as if they were in slow motion. It felt like a horror movie, or as close to one as Steve had ever experienced – he didn’t frighten easily, which meant that the lacklustre plotlines in horror movies were not enough to keep him occupied. Bucky, on the other hand, usually loved them to pieces, but evidently not when they were reflected in his everyday life.

On the other side of the otherwise empty corridor there was Reed Richards, bookbag in hand, wearing a sweater that really didn’t have any right to look as good as it did, especially considering the sensible shoe choice he had decided on.

Bucky let out a groan. “Of all the people,” he muttered, and Steve rammed his elbow into Bucky’s ribs. “Ow!”

“Shut up,” Steve hissed. “We want him on side.”

Reed raised an eyebrow. “On side for what?”

Shit.

Bucky’s gaze immediately went to bore into the side of Tony’s head, as if to implore him _don’t say the truth don’t tell him the truth keep your mouth shut let us lie for you._ Meanwhile, Steve was desperately trying to think of a cover story, running through hundreds of potential stories in his mind.

Unfortunately, Steve’s brain didn’t work as quickly as Tony’s did. Just as he opened his mouth, he realised that Tony had already blurted everything out.

“There’s a flamingo in my locker that my dad bought me for my half birthday but he doesn’t know that he bought it and now Bernard is hungry and getting really, really angry so we need to move it out of her and bring it to Jarvis because he’ll keep him safe.”

“Shit,” Bucky whispered.

“Agreed,” Steve mumbled.

Reed raised an eyebrow, and then looked past them towards the locker, which was now being dented from the inside. Clearly, flamingos packed a punch. Steve wondered whether that was due to its beak, or whether the bird was kicking the door. He would’ve laughed at the mental image, one that he knew Bucky was envisioning right now as well if his strained smile was anything to go by, if everything wasn’t hanging in the balance.

“You need to think things through,” Reed said finally, which was absolutely not what any of them had expected. “Get gloves from the handyman’s store, it’ll protect you from getting bitten when you’re transporting the flamingo. You’ll need to move fast with the sacks to stop him chewing through, but you should make it – the shape of its beak will make it difficult to angle bites. Do you have a plan of where you are going to drop him off until the end of the day?”

Tony turned to Steve and Bucky, who both shrugged. “No,” he said slowly.

“You should put it in the gardener’s shed. He’s off for the winter now.” Reed paused for a minute, chewing on the corner of his lip as he was prone to do. Tony swallowed thickly, his eyes following the movement. “You also need to tell Principal Fury.”

That shocked Tony out of his stupor. “What?” he demanded, stepping forward at the same time as Steve and Bucky did, eyebrows furrowed. “We are _not_ telling Principal Fury. Are you absolutely insane?”

“Are _you_ insane?” Reed countered.

“Probably!” Tony exclaimed. “But that’s not an argument for telling the headmaster!”

“For one, these two-” Reed gestured to Steve and Bucky, both of whom were vaguely offended “-are already on probation for setting bees off in the common room. For another, your parents are going to know you brought the flamingo to school before long, so it’s better telling them now.”

“So you’re an advocate for honesty now, then?” Tony asked. It was only once he had finished speaking that Steve registered how his hand was moving behind his back, waving them towards the locker. Steve met Bucky’s eye and nodded once. Reed’s attention was focused on Tony, and so they moved slowly towards the locker. They needed gloves, they needed ropes, they needed sacks, but for now, putting Steve’s hoodie over the flamingo’s head would have to suffice.

Reed’s foot tapped against the floor. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know, I can’t tell if that’s a rhetorical question, if you’re trying to start a fight, or if it’s a genuine question.”

“Of course it’s a genuine question, Tony! How could it be anything else?”

“God, you’re not actually that dense, are you? There’s a thing called implication, Reed!”

“Well excuse me for not knowing people like you do! I asked a question, and you haven’t answered it yet!”

“Because I don’t want to!”

Reed snuffed a laugh. “That’s really mature. Good job, Stark.”

“So I’m Stark now?”

Bucky’s hands worked quickly to remove the padlock from Tony’s locker. His fingers were shaking minutely, and Steve wanted to reach out and touch them, just enough to keep them steady, but he held back. He didn’t even know what they were, but if he had to guess, he would bet that they were far from friends. They had been pulled together by Tony, they had shared a brief moment of understanding that was simply borne of years of knowing each other, and that was all that he was going to read into it. He was determined.

“What are you talking about?” Reed asked, stepping back, hands up. “You’re being really confusing, Tony!”

“You’re supposed to be a genius!” Tony said, his voice only growing in volume as he continued to speak. Steve wondered how he could be acting so well – he was insanely good at being distracting, always had been. “How the hell could you not know what I’m trying to say?”

“How about you say it, and then I’ll tell you if I knew or not?”

“Saying it isn’t what I was trying to do! I was trying to show it!”

“ _When?”_

“During the summer! Your birthday, idiot!”

“What did you do at my birthday?”

Bucky held his hand up. Five fingers – or four and a thumb, as Delilah would always correct. God, Steve missed his sisters. Four fingers. Steve moved to the side of the locker door that would open up, and braced with his grip on the handle. Three fingers. Two. One.

“I tried to kiss you! Wasn’t that _obvious?”_

The flamingo rustled behind the door, and then Steve pulled it open. Bucky was on hand immediately, Steve’s hoodie clutched in his grasp. He aimed to put it over the bird’s head, but before he had the chance, the flamingo ducked down underneath him and made a break for it down the hall.

Reed was already gaping, Tony looked as if he had just ran a marathon, but Bernard was enough to snap them out of whatever conversation they had just been happening. Steve pointed after Bernard, panic building in his chest. “Get that bird!” he commanded.

Bucky saluted him before taking off running. “Got it, Captain!” he called back.

Everyone was running. Most of them, of course, were running after Bernard the flamingo, the reason that all of them were here in the first place. There was one, though, who was pretending desperately that his heart was pounding because he was running after Bucky, instead, rather than anything else. He had always been running after Bucky, even before they knew each other, even before he found out that he was one of the best people alive. Before, it had been something that Steve accepted, something that he appreciated, even. Why wouldn’t he follow someone he loved that desperately? Why wouldn’t he trust in him?

Now, though, he found himself resenting the fact that he was going to give himself an asthma attack for no reason other than trying to keep up with his former best friend. He found himself resenting a lot of things, honestly, though maybe that was just Steve confusing regret. He didn’t know much of regret, after all, was too young to know what it meant to make mistakes. That would change, but for now, things were relatively simple, so simple that chasing a flamingo was the worst thing that could possibly happen to them in their lives.

“It’s going to be okay!” Bucky called back. He barely even sounded out of breath – all those cross country marathons really counted for something. “The doors are locked! He’s trapped. All we gotta do is corner him. Reed, take the left, Tony, go right, Steve, you’re with me.”

 _As always,_ Steve thought to himself. He didn’t have time to consider the fact that was no longer true before Bucky’s well laid plan went spectacularly to shit.

Given the fact that Cage and Murdock were not, in actual fact, having a fight out the back of the school, the grand majority of Leavenworth High were now dragging their feet in disappointment, returning to their previously scheduled lunch hour. That meant that the front door was open, and within moments, the flamingo disappeared into the crowd.

“Follow the screams!” Steve announced, surprised that anyone could understand him with how thin his voice had just become, breath catching in his lungs.

“Got it, Stevie!” Bucky called back.

“No, I got him!” Tony yelled.

“I don’t-” Before Steve could finish affirming that he was far from caring, he found himself dropping against the wall, the back of his throat burning. Natasha, one of the many that had gone out onto the green in the hope of seeing the fight, was beside him in a moment, pressing her cold hands to the side of his face.

“Rogers?” she said. Her hair was a bright flash of red, and something infinitely easier to focus on that the muted yellows of the paint on the walls. “Rogers, you need to breathe with me, okay? Here.”

She picked his hand up and ignored the hoots and hollers that erupted behind them as she placed it on her chest. Steve took a gasping breath and then focused on how her chest moved in and out, the way the breath left her lips. He looked up at her, met her bright green, dangerous eyes, and there was nothing but kindness in them. His breathing levelled out, and it was at that moment that Sam ran up, brandishing the spare inhaler that he always carried for situations like this.

“Here, brother, here,” Sam said, getting down onto the ground beside him and Nat, supporting the hand that wasn’t on Nat’s chest as Steve shakily raised the inhaler to his lips. “Big breaths, that’s it, Steve, big breaths.”

It took a few moments, but finally, Steve felt himself begin to calm down. That was when he realised the number of people that were surrounding them, how at least a dozen had their flip-phones pulled out to immortalise the occasion, and rather than focus on the crowd, he buried his face in Sam and Nat’s chests.

He could feel them share a look over his head, but he was far from caring. He focused on the smell of rose perfume that lingered on Nat’s shirt and how the buckles of Sam’s backpack dug into his cheek as he heard Headmaster Fury break into the crowd, demanding that all of them moved on, informing them that anyone who is found to be fighting would be dealt with in line with the school’s discipline policy.

Of course, it was at that moment that the doors burst open once again. Steve looked up, even if he really didn’t want to – it was like a train crash. He couldn’t look away.

Bucky and Tony were both holding onto something that, despite the hoodie that covered half of its body, was undeniably a flamingo. Reed Richards was beside them, his face bright purple and his inhaler clasped in his right hand, and his lip had bled so much that it had begun to drip down onto his chin.

“My office,” Fury said, his voice signifying a thunderous (or murderous) rage. “Every single one of you. That includes you, Rogers. Wilson, Natasha, get back to lunch now. Don’t make me say it twice.”

-

Sarah Rogers really deserved better than constantly being called to Headmaster’s Fury’s office, but Steve was of the opinion that he also deserved better than dealing with the drama that surrounded Tony Stark and Reed Richards for, well, the rest of time. He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened between them or what had been said as they ran across the football field after Bernard (who Jarvis sent to a zoo the second he got his hands on him, which was probably the best choice all around even if Tony was insanely pissed about it at the time) but something had definitely gone down, and Bucky wasn’t talking to him to inform him of what, exactly, it was. When the annual soap box race of Leavenworth rolled around, rather than working together as they had the past ten years at least, Reed and Tony went against each other for the very first time.

Tony chose Bucky as his driver, true to form. (Creators couldn’t drive their own vehicles, something he had tried – and failed – to argue passionately against.) Bucky had taken off, screaming, “Kiss our dust, motherfucker,” as he went, and ultimately beat out Ben Grimm who was driving for Reed by a landslide. Reed was left fuming, and everything just tended to escalate from there.

Of course, this is not a story about Tony Stark and Reed Richards, and what might or might not have happened on the football field. This was Steve Rogers’ story, and for the longest time, the hero of his story had been Bucky Barnes, and that is who it ultimately came back around to, though it was in the most unexpected of ways.

It started, as most things did, with Natasha Romanoff. She called Steve up approximately three weeks after the Flamingo Debacle of 2005, and informed him that Bucky Barnes had been fired from his first job due to “swearing profusely.” Steve had been immediately and righteously offended – he was nothing to do with Bucky muttering expletives under his breath as he was restocking the toilet paper, and he refused to admit that he was. It was at that point that he could almost hear Nat roll her eyes on the other side of the phone, and she informed him of something that made Steve want to melt into his shoes.

He did the only thing, then, that he could think to do. He showed up at Bucky’s door, and he hoped to God that the other boy would let him in. The door opened, and rather than Winnie or George or Delilah or Mary, there was Bucky Barnes, bright red eyes and tear tracks seared into his skin.

“I brought you donuts,” Steve said, holding up the bag of powdered rings. “I heard about Stella. I’m sorry. She was a really good dog.”

That was the first time that Steve saw Bucky cry in the kind of way that physically hurts, the tears that pull at your gut and leave you wretching, sobs that wracked through your whole body and didn’t seem as if they were letting up anytime soon. He stood in the doorway of the Barnes’ house and he dropped the powdered donuts to the ground, wrapping his arms around his friend and stepping up on his tiptoes to allow Bucky to bury his face into his chest.

“I don’t want to fight anymore,” Bucky muttered, in the most pathetic and heartbreaking voice Steve had ever heard.

“I don’t want to fight anymore either,” Steve said, wondering if he should kiss the side of his head the way Sarah did when Steve was crying, and choosing not to. “How about we go back to fighting people together, instead?”

Bucky laughed, wet and choked. “I like the sound of that.”

Steve did too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's back, back again ...
> 
> First off I would absolutely like to thank everyone for their continued support on this series. Every single time I come back to writing Leavenworth it is so easy and beautiful and I am truly grateful for the fact that I get to share these emotions with all of you. Please keep leaving your feedback and comments, it means so much to me, and we are definitely getting to the most interesting part of the prequel very, very soon!
> 
> Also, I would like to get some opinions on possible future fics outside of this series. Would people prefer to see a Pepperony fic spanning the entirety of their relationship, MattElektra or something Stony? I will do all of these and more at some stage in the future, I'm just very interested as to what my fans would enjoy most! Thank you so much for your opinions, I love you all.


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